There is no information on how patients were selected for this treatment, which does weigh in on the ethics and possibly the technical merits (assume the number

There is no information on how patients were selected for this treatment, which does weigh in on the ethics and possibly the technical merits (assume the numbers aren't fudged) of even studying this. If the patient pool was drawn from consistent relapsers who failed to respond to conventional treatment, then this could be significant. If they just applied this procedure nilly-willy on first timers... then yeah, this is pretty bad. We can draw -some- parallels with various procedures designed to fight obesity. Obviously screwing around with the brain is on a whole different level from screwing around with your GI tract, but the purpose is the same - to physically change your body to change your urges. In fact, given the research raising the probability that the nervous system supporting the GI tract has non-trivial effects on our mental states, the two types of procedures may be closer than expected - though once again, obviously acting on completely different degrees on magnitude in respect to effect on your mind/being.