[identity profile] sashajwolf.livejournal.com 2007-02-10 05:41 pm (UTC)(link)
The book I'm reading at the moment - Tipping the Scales of Justice by Sondra Solovay - makes many of the same points. She also cites studies which say that weight loss surgery gives a patient in their 30s forty times the average risk of dying within two years (average being 1.6 per 100,000) and that up to 76% of surviving patients have not maintained their weight loss after 30 months. By way of comparison, losing weight by other methods apparently increases the risk of dying by a factor of 2.6, and 90 - 98% do not maintain the weight loss.