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By Laura Allenbaugh
NBC News

JOPLIN, Mo. -- When Denny Flowers looked at Lucy, it was love at first sight.

He found the 8-year-old Shih Tzu on the Joplin Humane Society Facebook page last year.  She had been abused, and she was nearly blind from head trauma. The medical costs associated with taking Lucy home meant she was often overlooked.

But those hurdles didn't sway Flowers.

"She curled up on my chest when I was holding her," he said.  "It was, 'Yep, we're going home.'"

She was so sick, the first night he had her Flowers didn't think she would make it.  But the money Flowers saved went straight to medical bills, and three months later she was sniffing her way around the yard with Flowers and his two teenage daughters doting on her.

"I was lucky to find her," said Flowers, who lives in Joplin, Mo.

Lucy made such an impression that he now sponsors a new animal each month with his coworkers, paying the $60 adoption fee so that new owners don't have to. Flowers is one of more than 400 sponsors who have agreed to fund a dog or cat living at the Joplin Humane Society in the three months since the program started.

Dani Reynolds at the Joplin Humane Society created the sponsorship program after last year's devastating tornadoes.

She posts pictures of the shelter's dogs and cats on the nonprofit's Facebook page. Followers of the site who can't take in a pet but want to help can sponsor an animal with a one-time $60 donation.  When a dog or cat is sponsored, their $60 adoption fee is paid by the sponsor, leaving the new owner with only a $10 fee to have the dog or cat microchipped.

"It just helps relieve that [financial] burden," said Reynolds.

Sponsorship programs have been on the rise across the nation, according to ASPCA Membership Vice President Steve Froehlich, especially as more shelters take to Facebook and Twitter to advertise their adoptable pets.

The process allows potential pet owners to take a second look at older or bigger dogs who are often overshadowed by puppies.

"If it's a sick animal, they don't have to pay the fee ahead of time so they can go straight to medical treatment," she said. "Or if it's a big dog, they can pay straight to make sure their fence is secure."

The Humane Society shelter in Joplin, Mo., has had sponsors as far away as California and England who want to help their animals find a home.

"That's where the people are and our job as shelter professionals is to get the message in front of as much people as possible and to find the most cost effective way of using resources to get that message out," said Froehlich.

Effective, he says, because it is the sponsor that becomes the advocate, posting pictures of the animal they're sponsoring and encouraging others to share the photo.

"[The sponsor] can become a talent agent a representative for the animal and they can take it on themselves to help promote that animals story and find a home for them," he said.

Each new sponsor has become a thrill for Reynolds, who said she never dreamed they'd see more than a dozen or so.  But with almost 300 dogs and more than 130 cats at the Joplin Humane Society, there is still a lot of work to be done. 

If you're interested in sponsoring an animal, click here to view the Joplin, Mo., animal sponsorship page.

YANGON, Myanmar – It was like carnival time in Mingalar Taung Nyung Township on Friday. A cavalcade of packed cars, mini-buses and trucks cruised the streets of this rundown Yangon suburb, music blaring, while the euphoric passengers sang, waved and danced.

"Aung San Suu Kyi!" they shouted, while bystanders cheered them on.

A group of monks raised their fists and shouted back: "Aung San Suu Kyi!"

Myanmar is preparing to go to the polls Sunday in only its third election in 50 years. Suu Kyi, the country’s pro-democracy leader, is running for one of 45 parliamentary seats.  

Images of Suu Kyi were everywhere – on t-shirts, posters, flags and red bandanas, together with a fighting peacock, the symbol of her party, the National League for Democracy.
  
Just one year ago, openly displaying these images could have quickly landed you in jail.

‘Will she win?’ I asked one man, who clearly thought it was one of the silliest questions he’d heard in some time. "100 percent certain," he said, his voice hoarse from all the shouting. "100 percent certain."

High stakes
Suu Kyi herself is being far more cautious about Sunday's vote, accusing her opponents of widespread intimidation.

Ian Williams / NBC News

A jeep decked out with special speakers to blare music helped whip up pre-election excitement in a suburb of Yangon, Myanmar on Friday.

"We hope the courage and resolution of the people will overcome the intimidation and irregularities that have been taking place," she said at a press conference early Friday.

She's not been out campaigning since she took ill earlier this week from fatigue and exhaustion. The 66-year-old looked stronger Friday and joked about her health: "I'm feeling a little delicate, so any tough questions and I'll faint straight away," she joked.

By most accounts the enthusiasm on the streets of Mingalar Taung Nyung has been repeated across the country, even though only 45 seats are being contested. That's only a fraction of the 659 seats in what will still be a military-dominated parliament, even if Suu Kyi’s party grabs all the seats it's contesting Sunday.

All the same, the stakes have never been higher. A clean election will mark another step towards the lifting of sanctions against Myanmar. And the mere fact Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, have returned to politics is seen in itself as a huge step forward - though only a first step.

Tough job for election observers
Myanmar has invited more than 150 international election observers to monitor the election, although one observer I met Friday said it was like nothing he'd ever seen before.

Ian Williams / NBC News

Young people participate in pre-eletion rallies in Mingalar Taung Nyung Township, a suburb of Yangon, Myanmar on Friday. They are wearing the colors of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.

There has been no access to Myanmar's election commission or to electoral lists, and it’s not clear whether access will be grated to polling stations or vote counting. That makes their job very difficult.

"There could be massive fraud or no fraud – I’m not sure we'll be able to judge the difference," one observer said to me.
Devoid of their usual tools, their judgments will be impressionistic at best, though as one said to me: "The mere fact this is happening at all in Myanmar is a huge step."

Suu Kyi seems to share that view. Her accusations of irregularities are aimed primarily at local opponents, for whom old habits die hard. She's said many times that she does not doubt the sincerity of Myanmar's President Thein Sein, the former general who started the reform process last year with an easing of censorship and the release of political prisoners.

Many analysts believe it would rather suit hem to have Suu Kyi in parliament.

Ian Williams / NBC News

A bus decorated in the color's of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party rides through the streets of Mingalar Taung Nyung Township, a suburb of Yangon, Myanmar on Friday.

For her, there is a much bigger dynamic at work than the raw election numbers.

Genie out of the bottle
"It's the rising political awareness of our people that we regard as our greatest triumph," Suu Kyi said Friday.

Hardliners are certainly capable of pushing back such as in 1990 when the election victory by the National League for Democracy was simply overturned by the military.

However, this feels different. It was hard not to get caught up in all the emotion on the street today.
It seems like the start of something more enduring, a process that the military will likely find hard to turn off or turn around, even if they wanted to.

Reporter's notebook by Kate Snow, NBC News correspondent

If you plan to see the movie “Bully,” don’t make the same mistake I did.  Bring tissues.  Lots.

I didn’t just shed a tear when I attended a NY screening of the film last week, I cried through most of the movie.  So did my husband.  So did most people in the theater.

"Bully" is one tough movie.  But in my opinion it’s a movie people should see.  It’s a movie people should talk about.

The opening credits are barely over when you realize the first character you’ve been introduced to is a teenage boy who has committed suicide.

In the film, his dad said, ”Some kids had told him to go hang himself – that he was worthless.  And I think he got to the point where enough was enough.”

It is simply heartbreaking.

Kate Snow continues her reporting on bullying with a new examination of the Phoebe Prince case on "Dateline" Sunday.

Filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, had exceptional access to parents and regular kids going to school on regular school buses, living their regular lives.  Nothing is sanitized.

“It’s a very personal film,” Hirsch told NBC News.  “I was bullied when I was a kid. So it’s like that project that you carry with you in your pocket and you say ‘One day I’m gonna make this film when I have the guts and I have the courage.’”

One of the stars of the film is Alex Libby, who was 12 at the time of the filming.  He is pretty courageous too.

Alex is seen being punched, poked and ridiculed on the bus.

“They push me so far that I want to become the bully,” he said in the film.

At one point during filming, Hirsch was so worried about Libby’s safety, he decided to stop shooting and give copies of his tape to the school and Libby’s parents.

When Libby’s parents confronted school officials they were essentially told not to worry.

But they were right to worry, just as so many of us parents do.

“I didn’t tell them what was going on, which was my mistake,” Alex told NBC News the other night at the Los Angeles premiere of the movie.  “I should have told someone.  I wish I would have told someone.  But I didn’t until Lee came along.”

Alex Libby’s parents were with him on the red carpet in LA and all three attended the screening I was at in New York.

I told Alex’s dad how much he reminds me of my own young son.

Philip Libby told us the film had brought Alex out of his shell.

“Before it started he was in a deep place that we just couldn’t reach him – and Lee and the film and the whole process has just kind of brought him out of that darkness and broke him out of his shell and gave us our son back,” he said.

Indeed, Alex himself says his life is much better now, thanks to a new school in a new state.  And he’s proud to be a part of a film that might help other kids.

“I’m glad I’m actually making a difference.  It’s amazing. I mean, I was always the shy kid, back when I was in middle school. I would never thought I’d be this kid who’s out there trying to change something. But breaking from my shell has been an awesome experience. I realized how awesome I am,” he said.

Now that … that makes me smile.

• View bullying resources for parents and kids
  
• Visit the official website for the documentary 'Bully'

Good Morning, here's where we begin... 

-Largest lottery jackpot in history

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The documentary ‘Bully,’ premiering Friday, is generating a national conversation about bullying – a problem that transcends nearly every culture and community. “Nightly News” has compiled several online resources for kids, parents and educators seeking more information on how to stop – and prevent -- bullying.

The Bully Project, the film’s website, features a viewing guide with discussion topics for watching the film with kids. It also offers ways to connect with the anti-bullying movement.

StopBullying.gov, a website managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers advice on how to get help, and ways to prevent bullying.

The National Association of School Psychologists has posted resources for families and educators, including links to bullying research.

Education.com offers a bullying quiz, suggestions on how to eliminate bullying, and other resources.

Hotlines

The United Federation of Teachers has launched the BRAVE campaign – Building Respect, Acceptance and Voice through Education. They’ve established a hotline (212-709-3222, M-F 2:30-9:30 p.m.) for students who need a safe place they can call.

The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Their free and confidential 24/7 hotline, The Trevor Lifeline, is available at 866-488-7386. They also offer TrevorChat, a free, confidential, secure online messaging service that provides live help through their website -- it's available on Fridays between the hours of 4 p.m. ET and 10:00 p.m. ET.  

Additional resources ... 

Rosalind Wiseman, a parenting and bullying expert, has recently been working in conjunction with the Cartoon Network on the project Stop Bullying: Speak Up.

For strategies on how to prevent bullying in schools, visit the website Stop Bullying Now.

The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s 2012 National Day of Silence is approaching quickly. On April 20 students will take a vow of silence to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools.

 By Robert Bazell
Chief science and medical correspondent
NBC News

Two thought provoking and disturbing studies out Wednesday raise major questions about conduct of the “War on Cancer.” One examines  the quality of basic research and the other concludes that half of current cancer deaths could be prevented.

Almost 90 percent of early stage cancer research looking for improved treatments is wrong, according to scientists at biotechnology giant Amgen and the MD Anderson Cancer Center.  The researchers describe their findings as “shocking.”

Read Wednesday's news about the decline in cancer death rates.

The allegations about questionable research in the quest for treatments appear in the prestigious journal Nature.  C. Glenn Begley, the former head of cancer research at Amgen, and surgical oncologist Lee M. Ellis of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston describe how scientists at the Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen tried to replicate the results of 53 landmark cancer research papers.  By landmark, they mean papers cited by others as significant progress.  All were so-called “pre-clinical,” meaning they were studies in rodents or with cells in petri dishes. The scientists were able to replicate only 11 percent of the conclusions.  In science, replication is proof.  If a study can’t be reproduced reliably, it is wrong. 

Most of the papers in question describe gene mutations or other changes in cancer cells that could be potential targets for new cancer treatments.  Such research is obviously critical for companies like Amgen deciding how to spend hundreds of millions testing potential drugs in humans.  The findings at Amgen do not differ greatly from those at a team at Bayer HealthCare in Germany, which reported last year that it could not replicate 25 per cent of studies.

Begley and Ellis assume that fraud plays little or no role in the bad science. “These investigators were all competent, well-meaning scientists who truly wanted to make advances in cancer research,” they write.

So, what is the problem? Scientists often ignore negative findings that might raise a warning, cherry picking the results and putting the best face on their research. The practice involves many parties -- not just the scientists -- in the research process who turn blind eyes to questionable actions.

As Begley and Ellis detail it, “To obtain funding, a job, promotion or tenure, researchers need a strong publication record…Journal  editors, reviewers, and grant review committees [and I might add journalists—R.B.] often look for a scientific finding that is simple, clear and complete—a ‘perfect’ story.  It is therefore tempting for investigators to submit suspected data sets for publication, or even to massage data.” 

Whatever the motivation, the results are all too often wrong.

Begley and Ellis call for nothing less than a change in the culture of cancer research.  They demand more willingness to admit to imperfections and an end to the practice of failing to publish negative results. 

“We in the field,” the say, “must remain focused on the purpose of cancer research: to improve the lives of patients.”

While the Amgen report casts doubt on cancer research, a separate study concludes that fully half of all cancers occurring today are preventable.  It raises questions about the billions spent searching for treatments and concludes that “we must vigorously implement what we already know about preventing cancer.”

The article about prevention appears in the top-tier journal Science Translational Medicine. Epidemiologists Graham Colditz, Kathleen Wolin and public health researcher Sarah Gehlert of Washington University in St. Louis review the best data. 

According to the careful Washington University study, smoking remains the biggest cancer-causing environmental factor  -- responsible for  33 percent of cancer deaths, almost 189,000 lives a year in the U.S. alone.  Obesity now follows closely, causing 20 percent of cancer deaths, or 114,000 people a year.  Pollution and radiation (most of it from medical sources) each account for only about 2 percent of cancers. 

The argument about allocation of funds for reducing the risk of cancer versus treatment is as old as our efforts to confront cancer.  But as these authors show the evidence and the need to act on it grow ever stronger.

As a society, we have shown we can do a great deal — but not nearly enough  – about tobacco. Obesity is another story, but we must do better if we want to be serious about cancer – and all the other attendant diseases.

Even short of the huge social challenges in confronting tobacco and obesity, there are many proven relatively simple methods to cut cancer deaths.  They include effective screening tests, such as pap tests and colonoscopies. The vaccines against HPV and hepatitis B both prevent cancer-causing viral infections, and aspirin is looking ever better as a cancer control agent.

Only 1.5 percent of the U.S. cancer research budget now goes to risk reduction. The rest seeks to find treatments, an effort that Begley and Ellis show is seriously flawed.  As these two powerful studies out Wednesday show, it is high time we reorder our priorities.

Robert Bazell is NBC's chief science and medical correspondent. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

 Related:

Daily aspirin linked to reduced cancer risk

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Could weight-loss surgery end diabetes?

A version of this opinion article appeared Mar. 27, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Corporate America's Military Opportunity. It is being re-posted here with permission. 

By Ann Curry
NBC News

In his State of the Union address this January, President Obama rang a bell that is still sounding 10 years after our wars began in Afghanistan and Iraq. "At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations," he said about our men and women in uniform. "They're not consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example."

We can do better than imagine. We can remember.

As World War II drew to a close, many Americans worried about how to assimilate returning veterans. Some feared the economic boom of the war would quickly fall back to the hard times of the Great Depression as millions in uniform arrived home looking for work. But these military veterans—the Greatest Generation, in Tom Brokaw's phrase—had the resilience and leadership skills to become not a weight but an engine driving the economy and the American Century.

Whether today's military men and women—the best-trained and most experienced military force in the history of our nation—can similarly drive our economy largely depends on whether we remember our history.

After World War II, veterans were rewarded with the G.I. bill and favorable housing loans. Perhaps as important, they came to be seen as a boon to any business that wanted to recruit disciplined, mission-oriented and motivated workers. Veterans then even wore military veteran pins on their lapels because it singled them out as worthy of special consideration as potential employees.

Today's veterans, many of whom enlisted after America was attacked on 9/11, are as deserving as their World War II predecessors. And putting them to work may well be the most selfish thing our nation can do right now. Where else might any business find better, more "can-do" men and women?

When a person has been repeatedly willing to run toward battle under orders despite the risk of death, imagine what he or she might do to inspire a company to find the grit to succeed. How do you say "no" to working overtime when your colleague is a former war veteran who is willing to say "yes?"

About veterans whose skills have been honed in hostile environments, Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn notes that, "Whether they're part of a factory floor team, whether they're part of an executive group trying to steer a company in a certain direction, cohesion, coherence, the ability to follow others and work with others toward a common goal is incredibly important in generating those widgets and the clothes and the computers and the smartphones of GDP."

The good news is that corporate America is beginning to wake up to the benefits of bringing a fighting spirit into their companies. Executives are learning that despite misconceptions, the vast majority of veterans—82%-90% of men and 80% of women returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the RAND Corporation—do not have a post-traumatic stress syndrome that could affect their readiness to work.

Prudential, FedEx, Gamestop, JetBlue, J.P. Morgan Chase, Coca-Cola, Sears, AT&T, NBC Universal and its parent company Comcast are among an increasing number of companies that are now seeking to hire veterans.

Gary Taylor, a top executive at power company Entergy (and a retired captain in the Air Force), puts it this way: "The skills that they bring back are a real competitive advantage, whether they're electricians, mechanics, computer scientists, engineers—that skill seems to fit well."

And even when a skill does not fit exactly, why would anyone doubt whether former Apache helicopter pilots or company master sergeants would be trainable? The sooner more American businesses realize the value of this sudden wealth of returning military veterans, the sooner we can stop worrying about our economy.

Our military veterans have exceeded all expectations. What could our businesses, our economy and our nation accomplish if we put their talents and courage to work here at home?

Ms. Curry, an NBC News anchor and correspondent, has traveled six times to Iraq and Afghanistan and is a daughter of a war veteran. On March 28 on NBC's "Today" show, she will help broadcast "Hiring Our Heroes Today," a nationwide hiring fair put on by NBC News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, hosted at the USS Intrepid museum.

By Jay Blackman
NBC News

Long after the welcome home ceremonies, the standing ovations at sporting events and in airports, and the hugs and tears, reality sets in for veterans returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For a large number of them, the new battle is for a full time job in an economy where so many other folks are out of work. The numbers tell the story. According to the United States Department of Labor, veterans who have served on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001 are experiencing a 12.1 percent unemployment rate, with young male vets under the age of 25 suffering the worst -- a 29.1 percent unemployment rate.

There is hope, however, in the form of job fairs sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The program, which started last year, hosted 100 job fairs nationwide, successfully pairing veterans with positions in the private sector.  This year, the Chamber of Commerce partnered with NBC Universal to host ‘Hiring our Heroes,’ and expanded the number of job fairs to 400.   

So far, 5,000 employers have hired more than 8,000 returning veterans.

Click here to find a job fair near you.

For one veteran, Marine Sgt. Edzavier Reese, it wasn't just his skills that got him a job, it was incredible timing and luck.  He had bounced from job to job in California after finishing his five deployments -- four to Iraq and one to Afghanistan -- but now Reese was looking for more.

"I was still stuck trying to be like, ‘I want to like something the way I like being in the Marines,’" he said.

Marine Sgt. Edzavier Reese found a job at GameStop in Atlanta, Ga., through the 'Hiring our Heroes' job fair.

Reese made the decision to return back home to Atlanta, Ga late last year. At first, he was going to take it slow, but once he got behind the wheel of his blue Mazda6, he decided to make the drive straight through, arriving at his mother’s house late afternoon.  A friend told him about a vets-only job fair at the Georgia Dome.  Reese wanted to take a nap, but said he knew he had to go.

"I went into the house, took a shower and shaved my head, and went over there," he said. 

When he got there, the fair was almost over.  As luck would have it, GameStop’s Mark Qualls noticed Reese. 

"I saw a guy coming through, great suit, shoulders back, walking straight, great presence -- he's got to come talk to me," said Qualls, a regional manager at the computer and video game retailer.  

After a brief conversation, Qualls saw in Reese what he says he sees in other returning veterans. "These days most of our veterans coming in have had some type of military service on the war front. So add to that high stress environment, a lot at stake -- quick decision making ability is really important -- and then lastly you have things like determination and honesty and honor and loyalty and that's not just words for them. They take an oath on that and they really believe it. So the better question is, ‘How can you not hire our veterans?’" 

Lisa Rosser, who is also a veteran, now runs a group called The Value of a Veteran, which helps organizations improve veteran recruitment. She says hiring veterans just makes good business sense.

"The military person has the skill sets you need,” she said.  Eighty-one percent of the jobs fit what you have in your organization, and the other skills that we bring are managerial and operational and training and leadership experience. What employer doesn't need those types of skills in their workplace?"

Reese was eventually offered a management trainee job at a GameStop in Atlanta. He says he is eager to get his own store soon. 

“I was pretty excited on the inside,” he said. “But like I said, you’ve got to maintain your cool, you have to.”  

For more on Hiring our Heroes, an initiative from NBC News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that aims to get veterans back into the workforce, click here. Learn more about job fairs for veterans here.

A "sensational" new finding could be the beginning of a cure for type 2 diabetes, a disease described in an editorial accompanying the research in the New England Journal of Medicine as “one of the fastest growing epidemics in human history.”

Two studies find that weight loss surgery can eliminate the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in a large proportion of volunteers. That might not seem surprising, since obesity is the major risk factor for the disease. But in these studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, many of the patients got better within weeks, days, sometimes even hours after the surgery -- long before they lost any weight.

“It’s pretty amazing,” said Dr. Phil Schauer of the Cleveland Clinic, the lead author on one of the studies. Schauaer’s study divided 150 patients with out-of-control diabetes into three groups. One-third got the best drug therapy, one-third got the surgical procedure sleeve gastrectomy, and the last group gastric bypass. The goal was to get the patients’ blood sugar (measured by the A1C test familiar to diabetics) below the normal level of 6 percent. Forty-two percent of the bypass patients reached the goal after one year compared to 37 percent of the sleeve patients and only 12 percent on medical therapy.

But those numbers “don’t even begin to show how successful this was," according to Dr. Steve Nissen, another author of the paper from the Cleveland Clinic. He points out that at the beginning of the study most of the patients were taking three or more medications to control their diabetes. But after a year almost none of the gastric-bypass patients needed medication.  Forty-four percent required daily insulin injections before surgery and none did after.  Diabetes is a major risk factor for heart disease.  Most of the surgery patients saw their HDL, the good cholesterol, shoot way up and their artery clogging triglycerides drop sharply.

“This is sensational,” Nissen told me.

The second study from the Catholic University of Rome and Weill Cornell Medical College followed 60 patients for two years and produced even stronger results.  In that experiment one-third of the volunteers got drug therapy, one third bypass surgery, and the last group underwent bilopancreatic diversion, an even more severe weight-loss operation where surgeons block part of the small intestine.

After two years none of the patients on drug therapy reached the goal of normal blood sugar levels while 75 percent of those who underwent bypass did and as did fully 95 percent of those undergoing the bilopancreatic diversion.  The authors of the study say these patients have achieved “complete diabetes remission.” Though the doctors have followed them for only two years, there is no indication that the diabetes is returning in any of them.

Why, in some patients, do the positive effects take place long before they lose weight? Marla Evans, 56, one of the volunteers who got a sleeve gastrectomy in the Cleveland study put it this way, “I was a diabetic, and then after the surgery, within a few days, the diabetes was much better, and within a month or two there was no diabetes in my blood at all.”

Most experts believe the operations somehow set off massive changes in the body’s hormones. Exactly what and how remains a mystery.

“This is hotly debated area,” Dr. Rudy Leibel of Columbia University, an authority on metabolic hormones told me.  And it is critical because if scientists can figure out how to bring about the changes that control the diabetes without surgery or with far less invasive surgery, the treatment could easily be more widespread.

But even now medicine faces the question:  Is it worth undergoing surgery that costs about $25,000 and carries a significant risk of dangerous complications and unpleasant side effects to treat type 2 diabetes? The answer, most experts say, is that most type 2 diabetics (type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease not impacted by this research) can stay well with diet, exercise and medication. But those who cannot control their disease face complications including heart and kidney disease, along with loss of limbs and visions. One person with uncontrolled diabetes can run up millions in medical bills.  So a surgery that was considered extreme not long ago may become a standard treatment for many people with one of the most common diseases of modern times.

Robert Bazell is NBC's chief science and medical correspondent. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

To read the articles:

• Bariatric Surgery versus Intensive Medical Therapy in Obese Patients with Diabetes
• Bariatric Surgery versus Conventional Medical Therapy for Type 2 Diabetes
• Surgery or Medical Therapy for Obese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes?

Related: 

• Opinion: Deen's diabetes confession a sticky hypocrisy
• White rice may increase your risk of diabetes

Watch NBC's Robert Bazell speak with Dr. Philip Schauer, surgeon and director of the Cleveland Clinic's Bariatric and Metabolic Institute.

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