The Scripps Research Institute in California is looking for an obesity vaccine. Apparently, there's a hormone called ghreling that's job is to decrease energy expenditure and fat breakdown. On rats who are taking some sort of ghrelin manipulating drug, they eat what they want to and don't gain any weight. A vaccine. For obesity. It boggles.

People are taking this idea of "obesity is an epidemic" and all the connotations thereof a little too seriously. Sure, epidemic literally means that something affects or tends to affect a large segment of a population at the same time. The Backstreet Boys were an epidemic in their time and it was evil. To the population at large, epidemic means a disease that's spreading out of control. A disease, literally meaning a condition that impairs normal bodily function, also has a different meaning to the population at large: an illness passed by a virus or bacteria. What all of this leads to, particularly when coupling a word like "epidemic" with "vaccine", is a social acceptance that obesity is not an individual's fault any more than catching the flu is. You just get it.

Obesity is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. It's like sneezing is a symptom of a cold. You can take care of the sneezing, but you're still sick from the cold. You can use drugs to take care of obesity, but the problem is still there. Maintaining a normal weight does not diretctly mean you're healthy. It does, currently, because the only real way to maintain a normal weight is to eat right and get plenty of exercise. We're animals, we need to maintain a good diet and a good exercise program to maintain good health. I'm not seeing how taking a "vaccine" and living a life of Mountain Dew and Ho-Hos is going to give anyone good health, even if they have a normal weight.

The best "cure" for the obesity epidemic is changing a culturally endorsed lifestyle of bad physical and dietary habits. Looking for a cure to the human physiology's predisposition to fat retention when extra calories are present might "cure" obesity, but it's not going to make the population more healthy. You don't have to be overweight to increase your risk for pulmonary failure with bad eating habits. 

I know a nicely proportioned and steroid-free natural bodybuilder with a triglyceride level sitting around 450 to 500 on average. He spent two years battling to get it down from 824. He never managed to get over his addiction to candy. He never thought he had to since he could maintain his physique by increasing his exercise load. Until he started having chest pains and doc told him he was fast-tracking for a heart attack.

I think that, for a limited population, such as the morbidly obese or those with physiological issues beyond their immediate control, this obesity "vaccine" is a good thing. For the general population, this vaccine is unethical. It's just one more free credit in a line of happy meals that continue to teach our culture that you can have whatever you want instantly and have it no-hassle without having to give anything up. Not that it's the truth, but it can sure look pretty.