Why Deep Brain Stimulation for Obesity Is Ethically Impermissible

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has increasingly been pursued as a treatment for obesity over the past couple of decades. This has occurred despite limited scientific justification or a serious ethical analysis of the concerns it raises. These interventions have relied on an "obese brain" model, which treats fatness as a neurological defect that can and should be corrected-reflecting and reinforcing stigmatizing, racialized assumptions about self-control, deviance, and bodily normalcy. To show this, we situate DBS for obesity within the broader and ethically troubling history of psychosurgery. We critique the scientific basis of the obese brain model and argue that its moral justification ultimately collapses. In this narrative framing, we argue that DBS for obesity is not a therapeutic innovation; instead it is a continuation of medicine's role in pathologizing nonconformity.