Picking up the Pacing in Obesity: Medtronic acquires Transneuronix

You can't pick up a newspaper these days without finding obesity discussed as an epidemic in the US. In fact, there are 23 million Americans with a body mass index of 35 or greater, which means that they exceed their ideal weight by about 100 pounds. There are 8 million Americans that are even worse off, with a body mass index of 40 or more. This isn't just a cosmetic concern; the co-morbidities of obesity include cardiopulmonary failure, diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and asthma; consequences so deadly, that, when they occur in 30 million severely obese people, justify surgery, according to a 1991 consensus statement from the National Institutes of Health . That consensus hasn't been updated, but Elizabeth H. Singer, a spokesperson for the institutes does admit that, at least as observed from uncontrolled studies, surgical procedures can produce larger and more sustained weight loss than non-surgical treatments, including exercise, lifestyle modification or even drugs.

Drug treatments for obesity largely don't work, chiefly because it is a multifactorial disease in a system that has many...