I did not hear Doug Hall’s commencement speech at the University of Maine, but according to the BDN article, he told graduates that gastric bypass does not “improve Americans’ actual health.”

He is obviously ignorant of this subject. Morbid obesity is a serious, life-threatening and life-shortening disease. It is second only to cigarette smoking in taking American lives. The National Institute of Health and other organizations have carefully studied the issue and found that people who are morbidly obese, even without other morbid conditions, have eight to nine times the chance of dying at an early age than people who are not morbidly obese. The NIH says the only effective treatment for morbid obesity is surgery. Eighty-two percent of Type 2 diabetes in the morbidly obese will be cured by the gastric bypass. Most cases of obstructive sleep apnea, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, pseudotumor cerebri, degenerative arthritis of the knees, hips and ankles in morbidly obese people will be cured or improved by the gastric bypass.

Does that not “improve Americans’ actual health”?

Mr. Hall should not mislead our impressionable young people with his uneducated medical opinions.

Dr. Donald M. Clough

Bangor