Once again, we see scientific research distorted by the search for the designer molecule. SH2-B does whatever it does because it interacts with a bunch of other proteins, enzymes, and hormones in a metabolic pathway. When this metabolic pathway is out of kilter, one result can be obesity. The point of medical research should be to answer the question: How do we make this metabolic pathway whole again so it doesn't lead to obesity.

But that's not what has happened. These researchers ascribe to the disease management model of healthcare in which obesity is a disease requiring a treatment. The only point of isolating one element of a metabolic pathway as the cause of a disease is to create a designer molecule that would impede or stimulate that element, since that's what designer molecules do. That designer molecule is worth billions to whatever drug company first patents it. The corporate shils at the NIH will ram through approval and take their consulting fees. And years later, there will be a bunch of law suits over the secondary effects of deforming this metabolic pathway.

They could have isolated almost any other element of that metabolic pathway that they could bioengineer some mouse not to have and have gotten similar results.

I suspect that Wooo is right and that insulin control is the key to making this pathway whole again. I like her metaphor about the orchestra. What she's calling the orchestra, I'm identifying as the metabolic pathway.

The point is that there are two competing narratives: the disease management/ lipid hypothesis story, supported by the medical-pharmaceutical-health insurance complex and the mainstream scientific and popular media, and the metabolic pathway management/insulin control story, supported by Wooo, myself, and everyone else on this board. Guess which narrative is currently winning?