From The Makers Of Botox: Weight-Loss Bands For The Not-Yet-Obese

Andrew Pollack, of The New York Times reports: "An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration will consider on Friday a request by Allergan to significantly lower how obese someone must be to qualify for surgery using the company’s Lap-Band device, which restricts intake to the stomach." (And costs from $12,000 to more than $20,000.)

He writes, for example, that "a person who is 5 feet 6 inches and has diabetes would have to weigh 216 pounds to qualify [for the surgery] now. Under the proposed lower threshold, that person could weigh 30 pounds less, or 186 pounds."

If the agency approves the change, the number of Americans eligible for the Lap-Band operation could easily double, ensuring more sales for Allergan and probably more insurance coverage for such operations. But the proposed change, sought at a time when the obesity epidemic in the United States seems intractable, still leaves some people uneasy, in part because of side effects and failure rates. In addition, long-term weight reduction is hard to maintain.

“You’re talking about millions and millions of people who would meet these criteria,” said Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School. “Let’s make sure by the most rigorous research that this is safe and effective.”

But cautionary tales abound:

“Before they start putting the Lap-Band on patients who are 50 pounds overweight, the public has to be made aware of how dangerous this is,” said Stephanie Quatinetz, a New York lawyer whose daughter, Rebecca, died at age 27 in August 2009, two months after getting Lap-Band surgery.