A Fat Chance

Dr. Edward Eaton Mason, MD, Ph.D., FACS, the "Father of Obesity Surgery," writes about his remarkable life on his 100th birthday. Born in a taxi cab in Boise, Idaho, on October 16, 1920, the year women got the right to vote, his mother Dora Mason decided one child was enough. She was a teacher and sculptress who created the original Nile Kinnick bust. His father, Edward F. Mason, was a professor of photojournalism at the U. of Iowa. Raised by teacher parents, Ed became a professor of surgery at the U. of Iowa, training thousands of medical students and surgeons. He did research in 1965 with Dr. Chikashi Ito from Japan to treat peptic ulcer disease with gastric bypass surgery. His discovery that peptic ulcer disease was not helped, but his patients lost weight, led to his discovery of obesity surgery. Also, this surgery could treat Type-2 diabetes by weight loss and dumping food containing glucose directly to the small intestine, resulting in the release of GLP-1 hormones. Severe obesity was an epidemic disease resulting in heart ailments, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and strokes. His surgery rescued the morbidly obese patients.