An Obesity Virus ?
I clearly remember when I first met a person who directly benefited for the discovery that many stomach ulcers are caused by a treatable bacteria. That discovery was worth a Nobel Prize.
Now there is a recent discovery that a common virus plays a role in obesity. This is by no means as cut and dried as the cure for stomach ulcers. It seems to me that developing a treatment that would eliminate this factor would only be a small benefit to an individual. It could be worthwhile because of the overall benefit to the health of the entire population. Early research showed that 30% of obese people test positive for the virus while only 11% of lean people have it.
