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Originally Posted by Angeline
I'm sorry to have to disagree Jedswife. Whether he looses weight through gastric bypass or LC'ing, the speed at which he loose will be similar. The surgery does not make him immediately better; it simply forces him to eat small portions of LC food. Good results could potentially be achieved just as well with LC'ing, without having to butcher his insides.
But of course, doctors don't recommended Atkins for kids. It's not good for growing kids they say. Much better to chop up their stomach. Even if the long term consequences of WL surgery are unknown, it's got to be better than that "fad" diet.
It's thinking like that, that has totally turned me off doctors. I was forced to realize that, educated and intelligent as they are, they are still relying on facts "everyone knows". Everyone knows that Atkins is bad for you; therefore WL surgery is safer than Atkins. And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt. Worst case scenario is that they push WL surgery because it's so damn lucrative.
When I watched Supersize me, there was a scene that stayed with me. A man was about to have WL surgery. Turns out that he would drink 1 gallon to 1 1/2 gallon of soda each day. He was diabetic (duh....really?). The surgeon said proudly "Gastric bypass is the only known procedure to cure diabetes". Maybe it's just me, but I noted the careful use of the term "procedure". Technically he's right. What he carefully didn't say was that LC'ing cured diabetes as well, only it's not lucrative like "procedures". What made me sick is that people hearing that will immediately assume that WL surgery is the only thing that cures diabetes. Clever bit of marketing there.
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I wish I could be as kind to the medical establishment as you, Angeline. I accuse them of more than simple ignorance. They resist LC because it cuts into profits.
All I'M seeing are a bunch of unscrupulous money-hungry bariatric surgeons electing some poor super morbidly obese teenager to "Jared-ize" their expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary surgery.
It's kind of how Pepsi might sponsor health camps for kids and programs designed to teach people healthy eating... or Tabacco might support lung cancer awareness initiatives.
On one hand you can say Pepsi/Tabacco is being humanitarian, a corporation with a heart who cares about it's community.
On the other hand, you can see that Pepsi/Tabacco stands to financially gain by improving their unhealthy image by associating themselves with health (especially children's health, seeing as it is children who start to use Pepsi & Tabacco products most often). Though Pepsi is not actually changing anything about their products make them healthier, just by getting the word out that "Pepsi is sponsoring/supporting programs to encourage healthy eating habits in children", by association Pepsi seems healthier to people. Put an ugly thing next to something beautiful, and the ugliness is minimized by the beauty of the adjacent object. At first the contrast will be jarring to the senses, unusual, it won't "feel right". After awhile, you start to consider the ugly thing as belonging and beautiful as well simply because of it's association with beauty.
I have no doubt a similar motivation is at work here. Those bariatric surgeons know full well that this "humanitarian" effort to "rescue a teenage boy from obesity" is going to increase public support of bariatric surgery, for several reasons.
1) The boy's progress will be documented, probably by Oprah, Dr. Phil, Entertainment/E! TV and other trash TV journalism. A nation will watch him shrink down, seemingly "effortlessly" (which they will be sure to do, minimize the risks/sacrifices and emphasize the "wow I'm magically losing weight" aspect of the surgery). Many many obese people at home will consider elective weight loss surgery because of the boy's success.
2) That they picked someone so young is not a coincidence. I'm sure they took surveys and polls, and discovered that (surprise surprise) one of the reasons people who qualify for bariatric surgery don't choose to have it, is because of the risks/dangers. If they show the surgery can be safely be performed on a child, and that child can thrive and enjoy a "thin life"... imagine all the people who will change their minds about surgery.
In other words, it's all about $$$. Yes, they may be giving away free surgery... but the advertisement and PR they gain is worth way, way, way more than the raw costs of the professionals time and materials. This will be a boon for the bariatric surgery business.
There are some instances where I can see radical surgery justifiable. For example, if one's life is in immediate danger, if they face certain death due to complications from obesity and need to lose weight ASAP, then I can see justifying the surgery. However, in NO other case can I see it as reasonable or human or even moral. Bariatric surgery doesn't give you anything you can't obtain much more safely with finding the right diet and/or mental therapy treatments for you. All it does is make it really hard to eat too much. It does nothing to address the causes of over eating (insulin problems, emotional/behavioral disorders, etc). It's a barbaric surgery, and doctors who perform it are mostly a cabal of unscrupulous thieves preying on the hopes and fears of desperate people.