This somewhat disturbing documentary told the stories of two morbidly obese American teenage girls who underwent life threatening gastric bypass and gastric band operations in a bid to lose weight. There’s nothing new in terms of the operations of course, both are relatively routine nowadays, however, what made these cases particularly extraordinary was that they were carried out on Laura Broach and Victoria Jordan – who’s pictured above – who were aged just 13 and 14 years old respectively at the time of their surgeries.

Obesity surgery has never been more popular in America and last year, nearly a quarter of a million adults went under the knife. British doctors are now calling for more surgery for obese kids in Britain, but even eminent experts in this type of surgery freely admit that nobody has any idea of the long-term effects of this type of surgery.

As one doctor in the programme pointed out, nobody knows what the results of the surgeries may be by the time a child patient is 50 years old because it’s never happened before. He added that because of the relatively short history of such operations, it’s possible that the surgery may “do more harm than good” long-term. Read more & comment »