Treatment or mutilation?

I have been sitting with the following image from Dr. Sharma's Obesity Notes for a coupe of weeks now. The image is an illustration of a procedure known as sleeve gastrectomy, defined in Wikipedia as "a surgical weight-loss procedure in which the stomach is reduced to about 25% of its original size, by surgical removal of a large portion of the stomach along the greater curvature." This is not a procedure done on a diseased organ but on a healthy functioning one. When an adult chooses this procedure in order to lose weight, I understand that, though I have grave reservations about such procedures, they are adults and capable of giving informed consent. But then I read the following, reported widely in the same week that Dr Sharma wrote about the procedure: A toddler in Saudi Arabia has become the youngest patient to undergo a bariatric weight loss surgery procedure.Doctors determined the 2-year-old, weighing 73 pounds, required surgery after observing related sleep apnea and bowing of the child's legs. According to a case report published in the International Journal of Surgery earlier this month, the extreme procedure was taken only after other weight-loss methods failed. Keep in mind this is a 2 1/2 yr old child. This procedure is not approved in this country for use in children. There is no long term data on the effects because it has been available for only 5...
Source: Jung At Heart - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs