ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1995, John Anderson and Jane Madigan launched Othogen Incorporated, a New York biotechnology start-up firm. The name Othogen will soon become synonymous with weight-loss if the company succeeds in obtaining a patent on its unique gene-splicing technique that has the potential to deliver a cure for obesity. Othogen’s dream is to identify genetic markers for obesity by splicing genes from affected people into bacteria and studying the strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that these patients have uniquely in common. According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, some 58 million people in the US weigh at least 20% more than their ideal body weight- making them, in the terminology of dietary science, obese. Othogen faces stiff competition in the industry. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November approved Meridia, which acts on the brain to produce a feeling of fullness.
