Monday, August 14, 2017

Dear Reporters, The Cure For Obesity Is Unlikely To Be For Sale On Indiegogo

Last week a reporter contacted me looking for a quote.

She was doing a story on a $449 weight-loss product that is being sold on Indiegogo.

Briefly, the device reportedly works by stimulating the vestibular nerve, which, according to the people selling it, triggers the body to reduce fat storage, and all with just one hour of wear per day!

Of course there's this proviso (emphasis mine),
"Used in conjunction with a healthy diet and regular exercise the average user should notice a significant difference in body fat percentage."
Does the product have peer reviewed studies proving it works?

Of course not.

But it does have an unpublished preprint hosted freely online featuring a 6 person treatment group, only half of who completed the treatments.

The preprint also features a 3 person control group who somehow managed to post an 8.6% increase in truncal fat and a 6% increase in total body fat during the study's short 4 month period.

And it includes the authors' assertion that neither group changed their diet and exercise habits - this despite the fact that the authors didn't track their subjects' diet and exercise habits, and also despite the fact that the control group gained a significant amount of fat in a very short period of time.

After looking at all of this, I politely declined the reporter's request for an interview, as a story at this point on this product, even with a dissenting voice in it, is not simply premature, it's unethical. It's unethical not simply because it further perpetuates the narrative that magic, quick, and easy exists in regard to weight management, but because as is evidenced by the product's Indiegogo page, a story, any story, on this already for sale evidence-free product will be used by its manufacturers to market it to a desperate, constantly preyed upon population (who at the time of this post's writing, have already given this product's promoters $728,463 USD)

Now I realize that reporters are busy, and many don't have the background to pick apart studies, but I'd like to propose that the simple rule of,
"Don't cover medical devices being sold on Indiegogo or Kickstarter as a means to magically treat anything"
is probably a safe one, and one that I wish went without saying.