Last month, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended that the agency should approve gastric Lap-Band surgery for people who are just slightly obese. Not so fast, says Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, who argues in an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times that the FDA doesn't have enough data to judge whether Lap-Bands can help not-so-obese people safely lose weight and keep it off.
"There is no research proving that a lap band provides slightly obese patients with long-term health benefits that are greater than its risks," writes Ms. Zuckerman.
Read Ms. Zuckerman's piece and judge for yourself.
Dan O'Connor
