People, people! Look at the situation from the doctors' point of view.

What are the benefits for the doctor of recommending what could be a dangerous weight-loss plan? If his/her patients get worse, he/she takes the blame (and there HAVE been weight-loss regimens that have made people worse off -- Fen/Phen anyone? Maybe with a nice liquid protein drink to wash it down). It's much safer to recommend exercising more and eating less, or maybe a nice low-fat restricted calorie diet -- it might not be effective, but people won't blame the doctor when it doesn't work -- obviously, failures of low-fat diets are due to a breakdown of the will of the dieters.

Considering the risks the doctors are taking, the really extraordinary fact in this article is not that 28.9% of doctors would rather their patients stay fat. It's the fact that 1 out of 3 GPs WOULD recommend low-carb dieting to their patients who want to lose weight. This is progress, folks.