Health & Wellness
A report by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released Thursday states that the five people had undergone a procedure to be fitted with the saline-filled balloon since April last year. In each case, the patient died within a month or less. In three cases, the patients died within three days of the procedure.
The cause of the patients' deaths remains unknown, the FDA noted in its report.
"At this time, we do not know the root cause or incidence rate of patient death, nor have we been able to definitively attribute the deaths to the devices or the insertion procedures for these devices," the report says.
In the procedure, a deflated silicone balloon is attached to a catheter and inserted through the throat into the stomach. Once the balloon hits the stomach wall, saline is pumped through the catheter and into the balloon. As a result, space is taken up in the stomach, making a person feel full after smaller meals, thereby decreasing their appetite.
Four of the deaths occurred after patients were fitted with the Orbera Intragastric Balloon System, which is manufactured by Apollo Endo Surgery. In one case, the person received a ReShape Integrated Dual Balloon System by ReShape Medical Inc.
"The FDA's letter to health care providers does not indicate that the patient deaths were related to the Orbera device or the insertion procedures," Apollo Endo Surgery said in statement.
"While the cause of death has not been provided or determined in all cases, Apollo has not received any communication or indication from the attending physicians or hospitals that the deaths have been due to the Orbera device."
There have been 21 reported deaths of people fitted with Orbera balloons since 2006, a rate of less than 0.01 percent of the 277,000 patients who have undergone the treatment, the company added.
While the investigation continues, the FDA has issued a recommendation that healthcare providers continue to closely monitor patients treated with these weight-loss devices.
Reader Comments
How about just do a little moderate exercise and stop drinking diet soda..
I can tell you my X ..having thyroid issues...has massive probs controlling her weight with correct diet & meds...and still has.
I wouldn't consider judging overweight people so easily as a positive or realistic attitude.
October 13, 2009
Overweight people are fucking abhorrent, which seems like an obvious and uncontroversial statement, but you cannot turn your head these days without gawking at the vile cascades of shapeless distended flesh that ubiquitously engulf your grotesque countrymen.
Look at these nauseating statistics:
33 percent of Americans are overweight, according to the federal government.
Another 34 percent are obese, which is even worse.
Six percent are “extremely obese,” which is code for “must be airlifted by helicopter to leave their goddamned trailers.”
Nearly a fifth of American children are overweight, three times more than in 1994 when the Internet replaced playing outside, and by “outside” I mean “Super Nintendo Entertainment System.”
The horrendous bovine masses cost the rest of us $147 billion per year, twice as much as a decade ago, which is more than enough to cover a universal health care system for people who do not plan on dying from a heart attack by the time they reach the ripe old age of thirty-six. These repulsive fat fucks require 41 percent higher medical costs on average, which screws everybody who does not get horny at the thought of KFC’s unholy Double Down sandwich. (No bread! Just fried chicken, cheese and bacon! As fatty as three Big Macs! This is exactly why George Washington and Thomas Jefferson risked their fucking lives to give Americans freedom!)
We are squandering the precious remnants of our broken economy to keep these worthless sacks of shit alive; it’s not as if they cover their disproportionate share of the tab, which would require actually getting off their colossal asses. Public health experts have proposed taxes on soda and unhealthy food to curb this epidemic, but their “solutions” are a load of ineffective, half-assed bullshit. Zoning restrictions on fast food “restaurants” and mandatory nutrition labeling have likewise failed; you cannot save people from themselves, especially when they have zero respect for their physical appearance and estimated lifespan.
We are Rome in decadent, self-indulgent decline. The corpulent hordes are never going to willingly sacrifice their extravagant caloric intake—even if it costs a few cents more—which leaves a solitary, mildly objectionable option:
We need to kill the fatties. We need to kill the fatties as soon as humanly possible.
Abandon your sentimental, weak-willed “conscience” and listen to reason; it is imperative—nay, moral—that we purge citizens who refuse to binge and purge. There must be no gutlessness when it comes to eradicating the guts amongst our numbers, no cowardice when it comes to culling our cellulite-ridden comrades. No middle ground exists in this War to the Death; it’s either them or us, the Überskinnies or the Högfuchs. Are you on the side of Good Angelic Temperance or Evil Rotund Scum?
You might bristle at the logistics of implementing a modern holocaust of the flabby-bellied untermensch, especially coming from a Jew like myself. Admittedly it raises many questions: can we construct ovens large enough to enclose the average Midwestern family? Would pollution from the smokestacks contribute to global warming more or less than the red meat-heavy diets of these incurable beasts with human faces? And if obesity is genetic, wouldn’t this glorious and economical scheme to slaughter the hedonistic chunky swine amount to genocide?
Answer: pretty much, yeah, which is why we should take a cue from our genocidal forefathers and force the overweight onto reservations where no decent person has to look at them anymore.
“Marty,” you say, “why do we need to kill the fatties when we can simply work them down to a respectable size in the ‘condensation camps’? Isn't slave labor a fantastic workout, especially when you are not fed for weeks at a time?” WELL, FRIEND, JUSTICE MEANS PURE FUCKING JUSTICE, AND THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS.
“Marty,” you say, “won't the fatties eat themselves to death anyway?” OF COURSE, BUT NOT SOON ENOUGH FOR MY “TASTE.”
“Marty,” you say, “what about the fatties who righteously despise themselves and try to lose weight but cannot regardless of their efforts, or who lack access to a gym? They deserve mercy, yes?” TRUE CONFESSION: AFTER COLLEGE I PUT ON 40 POUNDS FROM DRINKING TOO MUCH BEER. YOU KNOW HOW I LOST IT ALL? A PULL-UP BAR, RUNNING SHOES AND SELF-CONTROL; IT'S NOT FUCKING DIFFICULT. NO GODDAMNED MERCY!!!!!!!
Another excellent question is: how much excess poundage qualifies a whale for extermination?
This is tricky because the Body Mass Index, a formula created 180 years ago that divides weight by height, is a flawed and obsolete indicator of health despite its continued widespread use, as it fails to differentiate between weight from fat and weight from muscle. We need a more precise technique to separate the wheat of society from the chaff of obesity. (According to Wikipedia, chaff is “a waste material ploughed into the soil or burnt,” and I could not agree more.) Here is an example of such a progressive method: throw the fatties into the fucking ocean; if they float, shoot them immediately. If they don’t float, who gives a shit?
Naturally you might be thinking and/or screaming: “This is elitism! This is classism! This would disproportionately harm the poor, you snide judgmental out-of-touch city-slicker bastard!”
While it’s true that underprivileged citizens have higher rates of obesity than the prosperous, which is basically the definition of irony, it’s not necessarily because they are underprivileged. An Extra Value Meal costs approximately $6.00 and contains as many as 1,550 calories. Let’s try an experiment called Going to the Fucking Grocery Store!
My grocery store had chicken on sale for $2.50 per pound; one-third of a pound is a decent serving size, so that’s $.83 for the meat course. A bag of spinach was $2.50 and contained two servings, so that’s $1.25 for an antioxidant-loaded vegetable. A box of vitamin-enriched rice was $1.15 and had three servings, so that’s $.38. Holy shit, I just created a healthy meal, totaling fewer than 300 calories—which takes twenty minutes to cook, by the way, not exactly a massive burden—for less than $2.50, NOT EVEN HALF THE PRICE OF A FECAL VALUE MEAL. You cannot blame the poor for their poverty—due to the recession everyone is poor, including billionaires—but there is no excuse for laziness and therefore obesity.
A final consideration is that, after we commence our Final Solution to the Piggy Problem, we will have millions of bloated carcasses lying around, stinking up the place and blocking public transportation (as if the piggies were not guilty of this before we filled the streets with their sodium-clogged, high-fructose blood syrup). Look on the bright side: as soon as scientists figure out how to refine these corpses into oil, we will have a new source of alternative energy that will not deprive the planet of its limited resources. Everybody wins! Except the Högfuchs! Because they were fucking executed!
Jesus Christ, I hate fat people.
That might calm you down a bit...
Self discipline is good but too much of it can make one very dull & boring. And I'm sure you know how nature copes with things that are inflexible and what that can lead to in human terms.
Perhaps there is no better example than the current Opioid deadly overdose epidemic. 33,000 dead in 2015. Of course they don't have current statistics, kind of like how no one actually knows how many people get killed by cops, for some one it is too dangerous for us to know any truth. That someone is more focused on our real enemy, Russia! Now there is a situation he/they can profit from.
So how to fix? Realize that divide and conquer is how they have always ruled. We fight each other rather than the real danger to humanity. The far right and far left have way more in common with each other than we have we have with oligarch super wealthy who spend their money figuring out how to terrorize us all and crucially, keep us fighting amongst ourselves.
They are the ones who hired the food Fascists that have figured out what chemicals to lace our food with so we never feel full. It winds up being chemical warfare, right along with with booze, smokes and all the other addictive stuff we “need” each day.
We are literally submerged in a sea of manipulation, turn off the TV. Watching films is brain washing, that sense of righteous hatred you get, does not help! If you want to hate, hate a system that supports terrorism around the world while ignoring 33,000 dead people right here at home. Prescription drugs, FDA approved, not a thing to be done, too much profit and we need a market for all that Afghanistan heroin.
So the KKK and BLM types need to sit together, work out their differences and get on with bringing sanity back to North America. At this rate we will eventually all wind up eating too much and then who you gonna hate? Well how about the system that created the pandemic in the first place!
[ The FDA = The Federal Death Administration]