good questions, rust--and I think you are wise to always be a skeptic, always research more, always stick to a high evidenciary requirement.

Have you read Adiposity 101 ? After reading it, I was both shocked/dismayed and yet not surprised at its thesis, which is (pretty much) it's nigh-on impossible to lose weight and keep it off. I regained weight rapidly after very low calorie dietinging by eating only 1200 calories per day, so clearly the old thermodynamic 3500 calories equals a pound business is a lie. Is LC the whole truth? Probably not. I don't lose miraculously on LC, either! But I am free of cravings, food obsessions, a number of minor health symptoms have disappeared and I'm leaner than I was. Most importantly, while I certainly was unable to keep at 500 calorie/day dieting for the long run, I think I can eat the way I'm eating now 59 days out of every 60 forever. (Can't promise perfection!)

Might doing LC eventually kill me through some heretofore unknown mechnism?...well, sure. So might eating apples, as it turns out, or fish, or toothpaste. Who knows? I can't fixate on possible dangers and yet try to stay educated. This reminds me, in a sort of odd way, of the statistic I once heard that for every minute your exercise, you'll likely add a minute to your life. The result of this clearly is, you trade in minutes now, in your youth, for some extra minutes in the nursing home! My conclusion to that? If you hate exercising, don't do it! You're just wasting perfectly good minutes! If you aren't enjoying LC eating, don't do it. If you think you can stay forever on another sort of diet (for in order to keep the weight off, you have to make permanent changes), choose that.

Sorry about your brother. I hope he is okay.