Getting rid of extra pounds.(obesity as a long-term and hard-to-treat illness)

Every morning Harley Lisherness, the head of a roofing-materials company in Phoenix, Arizona, looks out his bathroom window at Camelback Mountain and wonders if he'll ever be able to climb it. Plenty of people make the trip. But Lisherness is carrying 168 kilos on his 1.9- meter frame. He simply doesn't have the energy to hike up the steep mountain trail. In the past, doctors considered weight problems like Lisherness's a lifestyle choice--one that put him at greater risk for cancers, diabetes and heart disease. But Lisherness, 61, disagrees. "I'm completely convinced this is a disease," he says. "This isn't about willpower. No one would remain heavy if they could avoid it."

Some prominent members of the medical community have begun to concur. They say that Lisherness, and many of the 300 million overweight people like him worldwide, are suffering from a long-term and hard-to-treat illness. The rates of obesity-related diabetes are climbing, too. The World Health Organization predicts that the number of diabetes patients worldwide will more than double by 2030 to 370 million. With obesity poised to become a global health disaster, the race is on to find a way to bring it under control.

The search will be a difficult one. For years pharmaceutical companies have poured billions of research-and-development dollars into devising a pill to make fat people thin. The two drugs currently approved for long-term weight loss, Meridia, which works on brain chemistry to control the appetite, and Xenical, which prevents the body from absorbing fat, both have serious side effects ranging from increased heart rate to diarrhea. Scientists are unraveling the complicated interplay of hormones, peptides and genetics that are believed ...