My English teacher told everyone in class (repeatedly) that we should never use “nice”. “Nice,” she used to say with scorn, “is a lazy word.” What she meant was that, with so many adjectives to choose from, we should not just routinely pick nice. Well, that was then. Now “nice” is on every Brit weight watcher’s lips. That’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence, of course. This is the UK’s gatekeeper for drugs. With so many to choose from, NICE picks the drugs that represent the best value for money - the drugs the state will fund through their National Health Service. It’s just issued final guidelines for the use of Acomplia. This is a great drug, but patients have to co-operate. They have to change their diets and exercise. If they do, their weight comes down. It’s one of those, “God helps those who help themselves” drugs. So NICE will only fund the drugs if the individual patient loses 5% of their body weight in the first six months (in clinical trials, the average weight loss was 10%). Treatment has to stop if a patient returns to his or her original weight while still taking Acomplia. And treatment is not to continue for more than two years unless the patient has shown real commitment to getting the weight down and keeping it down. Those nice people at NICE know what’s best for you. That’s nice, isn’t it?