> Well, the doctors you asked had a vested interest, they are unlikely to say “we are mostly useless”, so I can just as easily discard that. See how easy it is

> Well, the doctors you asked had a vested interest, they are unlikely to say “we are mostly useless”, so I can just as easily discard that. See how easy it is to maintain one’s belief without evidence? No, the doctor does not have a vested interest in lying to me. They're HMO doctors, this is but one facet of their job, and they're doing it because it needs medical oversight. Hell, the program itself was offered effectively at cost (it's in the HMO's interest to have healthy patients, so they charge just enough for the program to cover their expenses rather than treating it as a profit center). In a perfectly healthy person, extended fasting is probably fine. Medical supervision isn't because it's particularly dangerous for perfectly healthy people, but because nobody is perfectly healthy and complications can arise with pre-existing undiagnosed conditions.