Obesity

Workers ripped out a bay window and several rows of bricks from a house Friday to remove a nearly 1,000-pound man--possibly the heaviest person in the world--and take him to the hospital. Michael Hebranko, who once lost 700 pounds and became a spokesman for Richard Simmons' Deal-A-Meal diet program, was carried through the 10-by-5-foot hole on a stretcher used to move small whales. He was transferred to an ambulance by forklift.

Are chubby children destined to become fat teenagers who grow up to be obese adults? Research suggests that the problem of childhood obesity, which has escalated alarmingly in the last two decades, reflects a complicated and still poorly understood mix of genetic and environmental factors. Weight-control experts say that while fatness in infancy does not predict excess fat later in life, overweight at later stages of childhood becomes an increasingly accurate predictor.

Amgen Inc.'s much-publicized anti-obesity drug will be tested on humans this summer for the first time. The Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology giant is working out final details with the Food and Drug Administration and with various obesity centers in North America that will probably test the drug--called leptin--on 50 to 100 volunteers, Amgen spokesman David Kaye said Friday.

Interneuron Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares surged Tuesday, a day after the firm won approval to sell its anti-obesity drug, Redux, which works by making people feel they have had enough to eat. Redux, which will be sold in the U.S. by American Home Products Corp., is the first obesity drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in more than 20 years. Announced Monday, the decision follows the recommendation of an FDA advisory panel in November. Shares in Lexington, Mass.

Suddenly, there is a problem of too much and not too little. Chen Xuecun is worried. For most of his long career as one of China's leading nutritionists, Chen struggled with the chronic national problems of malnutrition and underweight children.

Arguably no trend is easier to predict than the future craze for leptin, the newly discovered hormone that regulates body fat so dramatically that obese laboratory mice given injections of it shed a third of their weight in two weeks. The obese mice, weighing three times the norm--comparable to a 500-pound man--were born with a genetic defect that kept them from producing the hormone.

For the second time in less than a year, researchers have pinpointed a genetic flaw that makes people fat. Three international teams of researchers reported Thursday that they have identified a common defect in a gene that regulates how fast the body burns calories. Those with the bad gene tend to grow potbellies and develop diabetes earlier in adulthood.

Tommy McGruder was happy to see the welcoming committee of 12 paramedics, three nurses and a doctor that greeted him Wednesday when he returned from the hospital to his South-Central Los Angeles home. The paramedics were there to carry the 700-pound man into his house, where the nurses had turned the living room into a comfortable place for him to sleep. The doctor was there to make certain that the kitchen was a safe place for McGruder to eat. Dr.

The ads read, "They never met a hot dog they didn't like." Well, neither have I--nor have the hundreds of obese kids I have worked with in clinics at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. With this in mind, I went to see the new movie "Heavyweights." It is surely a sign of the times that a major motion picture company has produced a film about obese children. I needed to know just what kind of message this film is sending to kids, fat or skinny.

A man who had excess skin trimmed from his body after a 400-pound weight loss was in good condition and making a steady recovery Monday, his doctor said. Tommy McGruder, 35, had 60 pounds of loose skin removed Friday in a 19-hour operation at Chapman Medical Center. The skin--enough to cover a 10-year-old child from head to toe--was sent to St. Christopher Children's Hospital in Philadelphia for use in its burn unit or for research, Dr. Ronald Goldstein said.