http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/ma...tml?ref=health
Oh, yeah, THAT'S a good idea. NOT. 
Quote:
| Michael Cawthorne, director of metabolic research at the Clore Laboratory at Britain’s University of Buckingham, argues that if we act early enough, we may be able to program babies’ metabolisms to provide permanent resistance to excess pounds. He and his colleagues are trying to develop a baby formula with an astonishing property: to turn newborns into those enviable people who can eat what they want without getting fat. As far-fetched as this sounds — another British biochemist has called it “science fiction” — it is based on emerging knowledge about how appetite and metabolism are regulated. The hormone leptin appears to act very early in life to program the hypothalamus, a gland in the brain that helps keep food intake and energy expenditure in balance. By influencing the set points at which the hypothalamus suppresses hunger and stimulates calorie-burning activity, leptin may increase the body’s long-term tendency to use up calories rather than conserve them as fat. Cawthorne would supplement infants’ formula with leptin during the period in which their metabolisms are being calibrated. He speculates that this kind of treatment “will help people cope better with an abundant food environment.” Experiments with animals provide support. A study led by Cawthorne’s associate Claire Stocker found that rat mothers given leptin during pregnancy and lactation produced offspring that were resistant to obesity. “The science is too immature to apply to humans yet,” says Sebastien Bouret, a developmental-programming expert at the Saban Research Institute of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, “but it’s a very promising field of research.” |
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