Latest news with #Lancet
Business Recorder
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Business Recorder
Will Israel adopt the Samson's option?
In Samson and Delilah, the Hollywood classic created before the purge of all the progressives during the McCarthy era, Sampson –like Orpheus, another mythical character — revelled in carnal pleasures was ultimately betrayed by his beloved the beautiful queen. Blinded by the kings' men he brought the entire Temple down through his brute strength killing the king, his subjects and dying beneath Temple's rubble. In his incisive book 'I'll burn the bridge when I reach there,' Norman Finkelstein fuses the figures of Sampson and Cassandra, a Trojan princess, who spurned the advances of Apollo and cursed by him, she lost the power of convincing people to believe in her true prophecies. Akin to Cassandra, he writes, a woman, an inmate of concentration camp predicted the slaughter of all Jews, but no one believed her. Her prophesy finally came true. Finkelstein prophesies, 'Israel being a crazy state is pursuing the Samson's option'. It seems Finkelstein's observation was not far from truth. By attacking Iran, Israel may have cracked open the doors for Sampson's option. After successive triumphs — from Iraq to Libya to Syria — the US proxy in the Middle East has decided to destroy the last bulwark of resistance, Iran, with the help of its mentor and willing collaborator, the US. As if the genocide perpetrating by it in the occupied Palestine was not enough the imperialist alliance deceived Iran by engaging it in a dialogue. Before the farce could proceed further, Israel was given the green signal to attack Iran. Emboldened by the outcome of the1967 war, Israel attacked Iran inflicting serious damage to its war machine, killing its nuclear scientists, nearly 80 civilians and inflicting some damage to its nuclear infrastructure in Nantz. But to its dismay it was neither 1967, nor its opponents were the Arab leaders. Nasser and Hafizul Assad were ensnared by the US assurances of Israeli non-aggression—only to be betrayed in a classic act of US-Israeli duplicity. The 'pre-emptive' strike by the US proxy destroyed Egyptian and Syrian airpower. It was the death knell for Arab nationalism. They not only lost Gaza but the West Bank as well, latter a part of Jordan the eternal Israeli collaborator. The assault on Iran followed the similar script; sudden, unprovoked, launched amid diplomatic negotiations. A rude shock, a blitzkrieg, another massacre no one expected. But killing spree is a favourite pastime of the Zionist entity. Its necrophilia knows no bounds. With the continued genocide in Gaza and the West Bank where, according to Lancet, 400,000 civilians have been assassinated in the cold blood, the 80 plus Iranians were merely a 'one-time meal' for the Cyclops. Once again, the US lost its face and credibility, if it ever had any. After the fall of Assad and after Trump received Golani — a known terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head — as a guest of honour, not only Iran but entire world knew about the next target. Iran standing alone between the Palestinians liberation and imperialism has learned from experience about Israeli tactics of attacking by surprise. It must have dispersed its weapons hidden beyond the reach of US logistics and Israel's hyped AI surveillance. Iran was privy to the history of European and American betrayal of Russia. As Angella Merkel admitted that the whole idea behind Minsk agreements was to buy time and prepare Ukraine for a protracted war with Russia. The only difference was that the Minsk accord was concluded but the Oman dialogue was unceremoniously ditched because of Israeli Illegal war on Iran. When imperialism was celebrating the losses it inflicted on Iran, to their bewilderment Iran retaliated like a wounded lion, hitting devastatingly on Kirya, Israeli equivalents to Pentagon, and its nuclear facilities in Dimona. When Israel started to attack on Iranian oil installation, Iran targeted Haifa that fuels the Israeli war machine. For the first time in their history Israelis have seen part of Tel Aviv in rubbles, corpses buried beneath the debris. The Israelis have never felt any repentance on the dead and alive Palestinians interred under the rubble of Gaza for they are Amalekites—the expendable ones. Reality has come to haunt them. 'There is something in human history like retribution,' Marx says, 'and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself.' No one can predict the outcome of this war, but Iranian attack has changed the asymmetrical balance of force. David Attenborough has poetically put it, 'The strike, deliberate and precise came not with power but with a message. In a single bold operation Iran attacked at the heart of a symbol, a symbol of invincibility, of technological superiority, of pride carefully curated over years of dominance. What was crushed was not merely a facility, or defence system, it was perception. It was the illusion that one nation stood above challenge….' Iran being a signatory of Non-Proliferation Treaty neither possesses a nuclear bomb nor is it seeking for one. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a stooge of the US and Israel. Anything open to its inspection is open to the imperialist nexus. It twists the facts, mutilates and adjust them according to the desire of its masters. Its politically motivated resolution censuring Iran over its nuclear programme gave Israel a reason to attack a sovereign nation with impunity. For Iran it is an existential war. Not a war of regime change, alone, but of balkanization of the state of Iran. Much will depend how long the conflict prolongs. The longer it will last the sign of exhaustion already apparent in Israeli public, its crumbling economy, perpetually living in a state of war will bring bigger fissures in its public afflicted with 'chosen people syndrome'. The entity itself could become an unnecessary baggage for the US to piggyback. Iran has neither started the war nor can prolong or stop it. This will entirely depend upon the US and its western marionettes who unsurprisingly failed to condemn the Israeli aggression against a sovereign state. Iran is careful not to engage the US directly in the war. Though it seems to be heavily infiltrated by CIA and Mossad, yet the AIPAC and Mirim Adelson — who contributed 100 million to Trump's election campaign — would like to engage the US in a full-scale war with Iran to protect the apartheid entity. On Iranian side, Ansarullah in Yemen is already active against the apartheid entity. Hamas continues to inflict causalities on its army. Hezbollah and Iraqi resistance may yet rise. If Iran has indeed destroyed the three F35 planes with its homemade weapons, it's not only its remarkable achievement but it means the American technology is not invincible. What other options does Iran have? After fully supporting Russia against Ukraine, supplying the former with thousands of drones that crippled its enemy, it's time for Russians to repay not in words but in deeds. But Russia has complex ties with Israel though it has strongly condemned the Israeli aggression but how far those words translate into action is anyone's guess. China has condemned the attack unequivocally, but China has close partnership with Israel. Right now, it is involved in building the port of Haifa, a port on the hit list of Iran. Both Russia and China understand that the fall of Iran — especially when the US is relentlessly supplying weapons to Israel — would mean encircling China, a long cherished neo-cons dream. Israel is allegedly attacking Iran using the airbases of Baku in Azerbaijan. If Iran stands at the crossroads of history, so too do Russia and China—for the fall of one may spell encirclement for the others. No empire — especially a decaying one — bets on a lame Trojan horse. These are relationships of interest, not affection. Ukraine is already becoming a liability for the United States, and Israel appears to be following the same trajectory. When liabilities outweigh strategic value, the US will not hesitate to get rid of its useless assets. The moment of truth may not have arrived yet—but it will. And when it does, what options will Israel have? It has already become a global pariah. A rogue regime with its back against the wall is capable of anything. Will it unleash nuclear devastation on Iran, even at the cost of its own annihilation? If so, it would fulfill the terrifying prophecy Finkelstein alluded to, the Samson Option—a final, apocalyptic act of mutual destruction. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Reuters
19 hours ago
- Health
- Reuters
Novo Nordisk's experimental drug results in up to 24% weight loss
June 20 (Reuters) - Novo Nordisk ( opens new tab on Friday said full results from early-stage trials show that its experimental drug, amycretin, helped overweight and obese adults lose up to 24% of their weight as the Danish company readies for late-stage studies, opens new tab to start next year. The company said side effects of the drug, tested as both a weekly injection and a daily pill, were mostly gastrointestinal with rates similar to other recent weight loss drugs. The full trial results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in Chicago and published in the Lancet medical journal. Novo's head of development Martin Holst Lange said the Phase 3 amycretin program starting in 2026 will run "for a couple of years" after which the regulatory review process could start. The company earlier this month said it planned to start late-stage trials of the drug in the first quarter of 2026 after previously announcing the early-stage trial results. Amycretin has a dual-mode action. Like Novo's popular weight-loss drug Wegovy, it mimics the gut hormone GLP-1, but also targets receptors for a hunger-suppressing pancreatic hormone called amylin. Trial results showed that 20-milligram weekly injections of the drug helped overweight or obese patients without diabetes lose 22% of their weight over 36 weeks, with a 60-mg dose resulting in 24.3% weight loss. In the Phase 1 study of once-daily oral amycretin, patients received increasing doses, ranging from 3 mg to a final dose of 100 mg. Patients who took 50 mg of amycretin at the end of the 12-week trial reduced body weight by 10.4% on average, while those taking the maximum dose lost 13.1% of their weight, the company said. Novo said the weight loss did not plateau, suggesting that longer treatment could lead to greater weight loss. In a Lancet commentary, researchers not involved in the amycretin studies said that "while additional weight loss is welcome and helpful, our evolving concept of obesity management has now shifted towards an emphasis on the reduction of the risks and burdens of cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities." Commentators Tricia Tan, professor of metabolic medicine and endocrinology at Imperial College London, and endocrinologist Dr. Bernard Khoo, said studies directly comparing GLP-1 drugs like Novo's Ozempic to drugs like amycretin will be needed to definitively establish their added value and place in obesity management.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Dementia Risk Starts In Childhood And Even Infancy, Scientists Warn
Though not all of our dementia risk is in our control, medical journal The Lancet has said that almost half of our likelihood of developing the condition is down to 14 potentially 'modifiable' lifestyle factors. These include controlling LDL cholesterol, preventing and treating hearing loss, and staying physically active. These guidelines are heavily focused on those in midlife (aged 40-60), with the only comment for 'early years' being that those who got a better education as kids were 5% less likely to develop dementia. But writing to The Lancet in 2024, scientists in the Next Generation Brain Health (NGBH) team say they have identified 'several high-priority modifiable factors in young adulthood and devised five key recommendations for promoting brain health, ranging from individual to policy levels.' Looking at data from 15 countries across six continents, the researchers found that many of the risk factors for dementia started younger than expected. '80% of adolescents living with obesity will remain this way when they are adults,' the group told The Conversation. 'The same applies to high blood pressure and lack of exercise. Similarly, virtually all adults who smoke or drink will have started these unhealthy habits in or around adolescence.' Vision loss, air pollution, and the aforementioned lack of education are less studied in young people, particularly as they relate to dementia risk, they argue in their Lancet paper. They point out that a person's cognitive ability at 11 is linked to their risk of dementia at 70; more and more research is showing associations between everything from childhood neglect to maternal smoking and the condition. That means dementia risk could start as far back as infancy. But, the researchers argue, many dementia studies begin at midlife, skewing the recommendations towards an older crowd. 'Young adults (aged 18–39 years) are a neglected population in dementia research and policy making despite being highly exposed to several known modifiable risk factors,' the group shared. It's frustrating to think that a lot of the modifiable risk factors for dementia may have begun before you could agree to them (though we don't yet know exactly how much, or by what age; that's what the experts argue we should study). But even among adults, the existing risk factors for midlife are not exactly in our full control. They include things like having depression, getting a traumatic brain injury, and hearing loss. The point is not to depress people out of trying to lower their dementia risk as soon as they can, the researchers say. Instead, it is about encouraging both better policy (like making education, including post-secondary education, free) and improved community care (like ensuring people with hearing loss remain socially included) alongside personal self-improvement (like wearing a helmet when needed). But pretending not to notice, or failing to act in a coordinated way upon, increased dementia risk for younger people will not help, the NGBH say. And, as they told The Conversation, 'while it's never too late to take steps to reduce your risk of dementia, it's also never too early to start.' This Longevity-Boosting Diet May Disrupt The Depression-Dementia Link The Nutrient Linked To Lower Cancer, Heart Disease, And Dementia Risk This Common Herb May Help To Fight Alzheimer's, Anxiety And Poor Sleep
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Dementia Risk Starts In Childhood And Even Infancy, Scientists Warn
Though not all of our dementia risk is in our control, medical journal The Lancet has said that almost half of our likelihood of developing the condition is down to 14 potentially 'modifiable' lifestyle factors. These include controlling LDL cholesterol, preventing and treating hearing loss, and staying physically active. These guidelines are heavily focused on those in midlife (aged 40-60), with the only comment for 'early years' being that those who got a better education as kids were 5% less likely to develop dementia. But writing to The Lancet in 2024, scientists in the Next Generation Brain Health (NGBH) team say they have identified 'several high-priority modifiable factors in young adulthood and devised five key recommendations for promoting brain health, ranging from individual to policy levels.' Looking at data from 15 countries across six continents, the researchers found that many of the risk factors for dementia started younger than expected. '80% of adolescents living with obesity will remain this way when they are adults,' the group told The Conversation. 'The same applies to high blood pressure and lack of exercise. Similarly, virtually all adults who smoke or drink will have started these unhealthy habits in or around adolescence.' Vision loss, air pollution, and the aforementioned lack of education are less studied in young people, particularly as they relate to dementia risk, they argue in their Lancet paper. They point out that a person's cognitive ability at 11 is linked to their risk of dementia at 70; more and more research is showing associations between everything from childhood neglect to maternal smoking and the condition. That means dementia risk could start as far back as infancy. But, the researchers argue, many dementia studies begin at midlife, skewing the recommendations towards an older crowd. 'Young adults (aged 18–39 years) are a neglected population in dementia research and policy making despite being highly exposed to several known modifiable risk factors,' the group shared. It's frustrating to think that a lot of the modifiable risk factors for dementia may have begun before you could agree to them (though we don't yet know exactly how much, or by what age; that's what the experts argue we should study). But even among adults, the existing risk factors for midlife are not exactly in our full control. They include things like having depression, getting a traumatic brain injury, and hearing loss. The point is not to depress people out of trying to lower their dementia risk as soon as they can, the researchers say. Instead, it is about encouraging both better policy (like making education, including post-secondary education, free) and improved community care (like ensuring people with hearing loss remain socially included) alongside personal self-improvement (like wearing a helmet when needed). But pretending not to notice, or failing to act in a coordinated way upon, increased dementia risk for younger people will not help, the NGBH say. And, as they told The Conversation, 'while it's never too late to take steps to reduce your risk of dementia, it's also never too early to start.' This Longevity-Boosting Diet May Disrupt The Depression-Dementia Link The Nutrient Linked To Lower Cancer, Heart Disease, And Dementia Risk This Common Herb May Help To Fight Alzheimer's, Anxiety And Poor Sleep
Daily Maverick
5 days ago
- Health
- Daily Maverick
The way we understand obesity is changing — What does it mean for SA?
Health workers have long relied on Body Mass Index to gauge whether people are within a healthy weight range. Now, top researchers have made the case for a new way to understand and diagnose obesity. In part two of this special Spotlight series, we take a look at what this new framing might mean for South Africa. If we are going to tackle the global rise in obesity, our understanding of the condition needs to change. That is according to a Lancet Commission convened by a global group of 58 experts from different medical specialties. While we have historically thought of obesity as a risk factor for other diseases such as diabetes, the commission's recent report published in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology concludes that obesity is sometimes better thought of as a disease itself – one that can directly cause severe health symptoms (see part one of this series for a detailed discussion of this argument). By categorising obesity as a disease, public health systems and medical aid schemes around the world would be more likely to cover people for weight-loss drugs or weight-loss surgery, according to the report. At present, these services are often only financed if a patient's obesity has already led to other diseases. This is given that obesity is not viewed as a stand-alone chronic illness. But if we're going to redefine obesity as a disease, or at least some forms of it, then we need good clinical definitions and ways to measure it. For a long time, this has posed challenges, according to the Lancet report. The perils of BMI At present, health workers often rely on Body Mass Index (BMI) to gauge whether a patient is within a healthy weight range. BMI is measured by taking a person's weight in kilograms and dividing it by their height in metres squared. A healthy weight is typically considered to be between 18.5 and 25. A person whose BMI is between 25 and 30 is considered to be overweight, while someone with a BMI of over 30 is considered to have obesity. But according to the Lancet report, this is a crude measure, and one which provides very little information about whether a person is actually ill. One basic issue is that a person can have a high BMI even if they don't have a lot of excess fat. Instead, they may simply have a lot of muscle or bone. Indeed, the report notes that some athletes are in the obese BMI range. Even when a high BMI does indicate that a person has obesity, it still doesn't tell us where a person's fat is stored and this is vital medical information. If excess fat is stored in the stomach and chest, then it poses more severe health risks than when it is stored in the limbs or thighs. This is because excess fat will do more harm if it surrounds vital organs. The lead author of the Lancet report, Professor Frances Rubino, says the pitfalls of BMI have long been understood, but practitioners have continued to use it. 'BMI is still by and large the most used approach everywhere, even though medical organisations have [raised issues] for quite some time,' he tells Spotlight. 'The problem is that even when we as individuals or organisations say BMI is no good, we haven't provided an alternative. And so, inevitably, the ease of calculating BMI and the uncertainties about alternatives makes you default back to BMI.' To deal with this problem, the report advocates for several alternative techniques for measuring obesity which offer more precision. The first option is to use tools that directly measure body composition such as a DEXA scanner. This is a sophisticated x-ray machine which can be used to distinguish between fat, bone and muscle. It can also be used to determine where fat is concentrated. It's thus a very precise measurement tool, but the machines are expensive, and the scans can be time-consuming. Alternatively, the report recommends using BMI in combination with another measure like waist-to-hip ratio, waist-to-height ratio or simply waist circumference. If two of these alternative measures are used, then BMI can be removed from the picture. These additional metrics are clinically useful because they provide information about where fat is stored. For instance, a larger waistline inevitably indicates a larger stomach. Indeed, studies have found that above a certain level, a larger waist circumference is linked to a higher chance of dying early, even when looking at people with the same BMI. The report thus offers a more accurate way to measure obesity in the clinical setting. But its authors argue that this is only the first step when making a diagnosis. The second is to look at whether a patient's obesity has actually caused health problems as this isn't automatically the case. They acknowledge for instance that there are some people with obesity who 'appear to be able to live a relatively healthy life for many years, or even a lifetime'. The report refers to these cases as 'preclinical obesity'. Such patients don't have a disease as such, according to the report, but still have an increased risk of facing health issues in the future. As such, the report's authors argue that they should be monitored and sometimes even treated, depending on factors like family history. By contrast, cases of obesity which have directly caused health problems are referred to as 'clinical obesity'. These cases, according to the report, should be treated immediately just like any other serious disease. It lists a series of medical symptoms associated with clinical obesity that would allow health workers to make an appropriate diagnosis. The recommendation is thus for health workers to determine whether a person has obesity through the metrics listed above, and then to determine whether it is clinical or preclinical by evaluating a patient's symptoms. This will inevitably guide the treatment plan. How does this relate to SA? Professor Francois Venter, who runs the Ezintsha research centre at Wits university, says the Lancet report offers a good starting point for South Africa, but it has to be adapted for our own needs and context. 'It's a big step forward from BMI, which grossly underdiagnoses and overdiagnoses obesity,' says Venter, who adds that additional metrics like waist circumference are a 'welcome addition'. The view that clinical obesity is a disease that needs to be immediately treated is also correct, according to Venter. Though he adds that the public health system in South Africa is not in a financial position to start handing out weight-loss medicine to everyone who needs it. 'The drugs are hugely expensive,' says Venter, 'and they have side effects, so you need a lot of resources to support people taking them.' But while it may not yet be feasible to treat all cases of clinical obesity in South Africa, Venter believes we should use the diagnostic model offered by the Lancet Commission to begin identifying at least some people with clinical obesity so that they can begin treatment. 'You have to start somewhere, and for that, you need a good staging system,' he says. 'Let's use the Lancet Commission and start to see if we can identify a few priority people and screen them and start to work on the drug delivery system.' Yet while Venter believes that the commission makes important contributions, he also cautions that we need more data on obesity in Africa before we can apply all of its conclusions to our own context. 'If you go to the supplement of the Lancet Commission, there's not a single African study there. It all comes from Europe, North America and Asia. It's not the commission's fault but [there is a lack of data on Africa].' This is important as findings that apply to European or Asian populations may not necessarily hold for others. Consider the following case. As noted, the commission states that BMI is not sufficient to determine whether someone is overweight and must therefore be complemented with other measures. But it states that if someone's BMI is above 40 (way above the current threshold for obesity), then this can 'pragmatically be assumed' without the need for further measures. But this may not hold in Africa, says Venter. 'The commission says that if your BMI is over 40, which is very big, you can infer that this person has got obesity, and they are sick and need to lose weight. I don't know if we can say that in Africa, where we often have patients who are huge, and yet they are very active, and when you [look at] their blood pressure and all their metabolics, they're actually pretty healthy,' he notes. 'So, I think they're sometimes jumping to conclusions about African populations that we don't have data on,' adds Venter. Is South Africa ready to move past BMI? Another concern is that while the Lancet Commission may offer useful recommendations for advanced economies, its starting assumptions may not be as relevant for countries like South Africa. For instance, while specialists agree that BMI is a crude measure of obesity, direct measures like DEXA scans are 'out of our reach economically', according to Professor Susan Goldstein, who leads Priceless-SA, a health economics unit at the South African Medical Research Council. And while supplementing BMI with the other metrics such as waist circumference may be doable, health experts told Spotlight that at present healthcare workers in South Africa aren't even measuring BMI alone. Dr Yogan Pillay, a former deputy director-general at the national health department who now runs TB and HIV delivery at the Gates Foundation, told Spotlight: 'I can't tell you how few people in the public sector have their BMI monitored at all. Community health workers are supposed to be going out and measuring BMI, but even that's not happening'. Goldstein also suggests that the monitoring of BMI in South Africa is limited. 'If you go into the clinic for your blood pressure, do they say: 'How's your BMI?' No, I doubt that,' says Goldstein. 'It's just not one of the measures that [gets done].' She adds that South Africa could introduce the combination of metrics proposed by the commission, like waist circumference combined with BMI, but says it would simply require 'a lot of re-education of health workers'. Prevention vs treatment For Goldstein, the commission is correct to regard clinical obesity as a disease which needs to be treated, but we also shouldn't view medication as the only way forward. 'We have to remember that prevention is very important,' says Goldstein. 'We have to focus on food control, we have to look at ultra-processed foods, and unless we do that as well [in addition to medication] we are going to lose this battle.' The National Health Department already has a strategy document for preventing obesity, but some of its recommendations have been critiqued for focusing on the wrong problems. For instance, to prevent childhood obesity, the strategy document recommends reforming the Life Orientation curriculum and educating tuckshop vendors so that both students and food sellers have more information about healthy eating. But as Spotlight previously reported, there are no recommendations to subsidise healthy foods or to increase their availability in poor areas, which several experts believe is more important than educational initiatives. Venter also highlights the importance of obesity prevention, though he emphasises that this shouldn't be in conflict with a treatment approach – instead, we need to push for both. 'The [prevention] we need to do is fix the food supply… and the only way you do that is to decrease the cost of unprocessed food.' But while this may help prevent future cases of obesity, it doesn't help people who are already suffering from obesity, says Venter. And since such people comprise such a large share of the population, we can't simply ignore them, he says. 'Even if you fix the entire food industry tomorrow, those [people who are already obese] are going to remain where they are because simply changing your diet isn't going to do diddly squat [when you already have obesity],' he adds. (Part 1 discusses this in more detail). Goldstein adds that increasing access to treatment would also inevitably reduce the costs of 'hypertension, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and a whole range of other illnesses if it's properly managed'. One way to advance access to medication would be for the government to negotiate reduced prices of GLP-1 drugs, she says. (Spotlight previously reported on the prices and availability of these medicines in South Africa here.) Funding A final concern that has been raised about the commission is about its source of funding. 'I don't know how one gets around this,' says Goldstein, 'but there were 58 experts on the commission, 47 declared conflicts of interest.' Indeed, the section of the commission that lists conflicts of interest spans more than 2,000 words (roughly the size of this article). This includes research grants and consulting fees from companies like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which produce anti-obesity drugs. In response, Rubino told Spotlight that 'people who work in the medical profession obviously work and consult, and the more expertise they have, the more likely they are to be asked by somebody to advise. So sometimes people have contracts to consult a company – but that doesn't mean that they necessarily make revenue if the company has better sales. You get paid fees for your services as a consultant.' Rubino says this still has to be declared as it may result in some bias, even if it is unconscious, but 'if you wanted to have experts who had zero relationship [to companies] of any sort then you might have to wonder if there is expertise available there… the nature of any medical professional is that the more expertise they have, the more likely that they have engaged in work with multiple stakeholders'. For Venter, there is some truth to this. 'It's very difficult to find people in the obesity field that aren't sponsored by a drug company,' he says. 'Governments don't fund research… and everyone else doesn't fund research. Researchers go where the research is funded.' This doesn't actually solve the problem, says Venter, as financing from drug companies can always influence the conclusions of researchers. It simply suggests that the problem is bigger than the commission. Ultimately, he argues that the authors should at least be applauded for providing such granular details about conflicts of interest. Rubino adds that while researchers on the commission may have historically received money from drug companies for separate research studies or consulting activities, none of them received money for their work on the commission itself. 'This commission has been working for more than four years since conception… An estimate of how many meetings we had is north of 700, and none of us have received a single penny [for doing this],' he says. DM
