Latest Treatment For Obesity: Brain Surgery
BFDiva Michaela posted a link to this video on Facebook; in poking around, I also found a story to go along with it. The surgery is “deep brain stimulation” in the parts of the brain believed to control feelings of hunger and satisfaction. Here are the words of the woman, Carol Poe, who is getting the surgery:
“I’ve just known in my heart that there had to be something else. That there had to be something,” she said before the procedure. “I’ve tried everything else. I’ve tried all the fad diets. I’ve tried liquid protein. I’ve tried Redux, Fen-Phen. I’ve had a stomach bypass. I’ve tried the Atkins diet. I’ve tried them all. And it’s not coming off. So I really believe that it’s got something to do with the brain”…
“When you’re heavy and you walk down the street … everybody looks at you and they’re snickering and they’re laughing,” she said at her home in Morgantown, W. Va. “When you go on an airplane and everybody looks to see if you’re going to be able to sit in a seat … the weight has just taken over my life.”
First, you can clearly see how this poor woman might have benefited years ago from a little HAES thinking as opposed to trying increasingly drastic and dangerous measures to lose weight, not to mention allowing her weight to “take over” her whole life. I have nothing but sympathy for her as the guinea pig for this brand new type of neurosurgery.
As for the surgery itself, you might think this sounds terrifying (OH MY GOD THE BRAIN) or you might think this sounds like a workaround that is on some way less drastic than gastric bypass. In fact, the surgery is only made available to people who have already had bariatric surgery.
The description of the surgery made me feel kind of dizzy. They poke around in your brain, while you are awake, and ask you, for example, if you feel hot or cold. THAT IS FUCKING CREEPY. And check this out:
In the months ahead, the voltage going into Poe’s brain will be turned on and then increased over time. “She got a nausea feeling at higher voltages,” said Whiting. “Our ideal plan would be to set the electrical setting at just below that threshold of nausea where she doesn’t really feel any different but still readjust her weight thermostat so that she can metabolize better and actually eat less if that’s what it takes.”
SHUD. DER. Big Fat Blog also wrote about this video in some detail. And on Facebook, Michaela expressed her outrage:
What can I say? Since we OBVIOUSLY can’t regulate ourselves, they want inside our brains now.
I will NEVER let someone send ELECTRICITY into my BRAIN to make me more aesthetically pleasing/socially acceptable. People say they care about fat people’s HEALTH, but there’s zero mention of health in this news piece. Yet people will get the message that this women will be healthier, that THIN(NER)=HEALTHIER, whether or not they gave any health measures (before OR after).
I guess when you are addressing OMGtehFatness you don’t have to think critically, ask tough questions or give an accurate portrayal of risks and benefits.
We’re fat PEOPLE, not a scourge.
I have Twittered Nightline a piece (or two) of my mind. If you feel the power of the Tweet, do the same. http://twitter.com/Nightline
Note that she’s talking about the video; in the written piece, the doctors do say that obesity “will reduce your life expectancy maybe 20 years.” Which: what!?? This just seems terrifying and irresponsible to me, to say the least. What do you think?
Posted by mo pie
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This technology has been used for years in people with Parkinson’s disease and is in clinical trials for ues in refractory depression and epilepsy, but this is the first I’ve heard of it for obesity. It really can make an incredible difference in PD patients (look it up online, there are amazing videos showing how these people can actually get some real control over their tremors). I’ll be keeping an eye on this for how it works for obese patients. I agree it’s a very extreme step and one I would never feel comfortable with.
This “treatment”, like so many others, is based on the false assumption that fat people have problems with satiety. Since we don’t, what damn good is this stupid implant going to do? And what damage will it do when it inevitably goes wrong?
As I said in a comment on a similar topic on “Big Fat Delicious” some days I really believe that the medical establishment hates us so much that the really do want to see us all die.
Yeah, go check out Sandy’s post on this today at Junkfood Science. She’s got the goods on it (and contrary to what is being said by those doctors using this, it is NOT approved by the FDA for use to help with weight loss).
This is not the only brain surgery they want to do on fat people. They’re also using gene research to implant altered viruses in brains to cause weight loss. I blogged about it here and added the link to Sandy’s post about the DBS.
First they try to disappear us with diets, then try to kill us with WLS, now they want to change our brains (like our bodies are really going to let that work?). Yeah, they want us gone alright, and they don’t care how many of us they have to kill in order to get rid of all the fat people, because everyone just “knows” that being fat is a fate worse than death (yeah, right).
I just want to touch on the saiety issue. I’ve been both obese and normal weights and currently hovering somewhere inbetween trying to find a balance.
When I’m stressed or upset or reach for food for comfort I genuinely don’t feel full, or hungry. When I’m having a day when I am more in tune with my body then I can tell when I want to eat and what I want to eat. When all I want is comfort food then I don’t give a flying fig how full I am or if I already ate.
Barriatric surgery is supposed to make us feel fuller sooner by decreasing the size of the stomach, but some people can overcome that feeling and it doesn’t work for them.
My feeling is that this whole brain manipulation technique won’t work either, unless they just reprogramme the whole damn thing ;-)
Is this woman actually a binge eater or uncontrolled eater? That seems a little unclear from the articles I’ve seen.
I mean, I can imagine someone wanting neurological treatment for binge or uncontrolled eating, and expecting that significant weight loss would follow. (Which it might. Or might not.)
But studies have amply demonstrated that the majority of defined-as-obese-by-BMI people’s eating styles are similar to the majority of people who are defined as “healthy” by their BMI.
“I’ve tried everything else. I’ve tried all the fad diets. I’ve tried liquid protein. I’ve tried Redux, Fen-Phen. I’ve had a stomach bypass. I’ve tried the Atkins diet. I’ve tried them all. And it’s not coming off.
If trying all that still didn’t get her any thinner, surely that is her body’s way of saying “Hey, I’m just not meant to be small!” I don’t think this radical procedure will be the miracle she’s looking for.
Shorter Carol Poe: “All the different ways I’ve stopped eating as much haven’t made me lose weight, so what I’m going to do is, I’m going to get surgery that’s supposed to stop me from eating as much.”
Bzuh?
The parts that bother me are…
1. This woman is in her 60s. Her life hasn’t been shortened.
2. She doesn’t have teh diabeetus or any other health condition that doctors would try to “control” via weight loss.
3. She weighed over 400 pounds before her gastric bypass and now weighs about 250. For her, the GB worked…it just didn’t make her THIN ENOUGH.
Brain surgery for what amounts to an entirely cosmetic obsession? WTF?
Even a WLS advocate would say she doesn’t need this.
This whole thing is just creepy. And Vesta44 aren’t viruses spreadable? Or is that what the altered part is?
She wants a thing to electrocute her brain when she’s crazy enough to want food? Good lord. Why not just smack yourself in the head with a hammer or something, F it. That will change your mind about having a snack too. What a sad, pathetic woman.
Addish, that’s what the altered part is. Remove the infectious agent, add a gene to turn on appetite control for weight loss. It’s supposed to automatically stop the weight loss when the “necessary” amount of weight has been lost (although the mice only lost 20% of their weight). If it doesn’t shut itself off, and too much weight is lost, then they have to alter another virus and inject it to shut off the first one. Yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me…..NOT!
I’m sorry, but as fat as I am, even losing 20% of my weight still leaves me “morbidly walking-death-looking-for-a-place-to-happen obese”. I think I’ll just go ahead and stay OMGDEADLYFAT and healthy and happy, thank you very much.
Paging Dr. Frankenstein!
vesta- That’s way to much to lose weight, wth. It’s no less crazy then when women would take out ribs and wear corsets to make thier waists smaller.
I was the first person to have DBS for weight loss in the world. That was in June 2003. To date it has not been successful. I have not been able to sleep with the device on. When I turn it off to go to sleep, I get up and raid the fridge. There are plans to put me in hospital and turn it on 24/7. At some point I will sleep and hopefully my brain will get used to the frequency and I can leave it on 24/7. When the device is activated, it works very well indeed. If it proves successful, it is much better than bariatric surgery.