New direction in weight loss: Trick brain and turn appetite off

This seems to be another dead end in the war against fat. It's another one of those "solutions" that is a temporary fix for weight loss, meaning as long as you have the implant, you will lose/maintain weight, but as soon as it's removed, you're more than likely to start gaining it all back. Why do I say this? Because it's mainly based on the stereotype that fat people constantly eat too much and don't know when to stop eating.

Scientists have long suspected that some people overeat because of a faulty connection in the brain. They don't get the message that they're full, so "they just don't know when to stop eating," said Knudson.

What percentage of fat people have this kind of problem? How many of those fat people have been on and off diets for so many years that they no longer trust their bodies to tell them when they're hungry and when they're full? How many of those fat people have a disease that prevents them from knowing when they're full?
But none of that seems to matter, because ending fat at all costs is what needs to be done, and re-educating your brain is the next new thing they've come up with. And guess what? It's another money-maker for the companies making the VBlock gastric pacemakers (about $35,000, the same as gastric bypass surgery, surprise surprise).

He estimates the overall cost will be comparable to bariatric surgery: about $35,000. But he admits there's no way of knowing how long the pounds will stay off.

Yep, looks like it's going to be just as successful as WLS in making fat people permanently thin. We all know how well that's working, but hey, even if you only get thin for a while, it's all good, right? Even though doctors will tell you that yo-yoing isn't good for your health. And people are lining up for this, in spite of it being experimental, in spite of not knowing what the risks/complications may be, simply because our society is so focused on thin=healthy, never mind that that has been shown to be so not true.

More than 80 potential recruits showed up this month to hear about the experiment at the University of Minnesota, one of 15 sites testing the device (the Mayo Clinic is another). "The room was full each time," said Ikramuddin, who hosted three information sessions. "Everybody wants to lose weight. The issue is, how?"

When are these people going to learn that fucking with a perfectly well-functioning digestive system is not going to make a naturally fat person permanently thin? Our bodies know what we need to survive, and messing with that system does nothing but create more problems, problems we would never have had if doctors and researchers would just leave well enough alone when it comes to being fat.
Now if they were touting this as a treatment for something like Prader-Willey syndrome, I would say "go for it", it might make life more bearable for those people and their families. But to say that this is a treatment for something that isn't even a disease - well, I'm sorry, but I'm not buying it (been there done that and it didn't work then, it won't work now). And I don't care how many people think being fat is a disease, it's not, it's a natural variation in body type, just as being thin is, just as being any other size is. There is a reason Mother Nature made people a wide variety of body sizes/types, and messing with that, well, to paraphrase a commercial from years back "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature."