My experience with Byetta was similar to David Mendosa's. I lost 68 pounds over the last 9 months. Millions of people probably should try Byetta, but have never heard of it. See below.

from  http://richandthin.bravehost.com

....Over the weekend of April 8-9, 2007 the “crawl” at the bottom on CNN and the other cable news networks endlessly listed the brand name of various pet foods that had been recalled. The pet food products had been contaminated with bad wheat gluten that had been imported from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" ?>China. Possibly the lives of tens of thousands of pets may have been saved by telling their owners of the recall. If instead of continuously listing the pet foods that had been recalled, the “crawl” had simply said something to the effect of “If you are overweight and diabetic insist that your doctor give you a prescription for Byetta because there is a good chance that it will allow you to lose your excess weight and resolve your diabetes.” It is certain that the lives of tens of thousands of people would have been saved.

How can the number of people who die each year solely because they are ignorant of Byetta be estimated? It is a fairly straightforward and robust calculation. Start with the example of David Mendosa, writer and consultant on diabetes. Even though he knew of Byetta he had difficulty getting a prescription and had to fire his doctor and find a new doctor 60 miles away in order to get Byetta. Obviously most obese diabetics are not professional writers or consultants in the field. Nor do most people have the inclination or ability to change doctors in order to get a particular medicine. As he documents on MyDiabetesCentral.com, in a year he lost 111 pounds on Byetta.  His results are not that unusual. There are numerous reports of many people with similar results in terms of percentage of body-weight lost on Byetta. He went from 312 to 201 pounds.

Until trying Byetta he had been never able lose his excess weight. We do know for sure, that if the day before he tried Byetta he had gone shopping for a one-year term life insurance policy, he would have been quoted a premium rate about 50% higher than what the quote would be at his present weight. He would have not had any problem getting a policy. However the premium would reflect his weight. Life insurance companies are not bigots or exploiters of the overweight, they simply use actuarial science to compute to the extent that obesity increases the probability that a person will die within a one-year period. They then price their insurance premiums accordingly. In a competitive environment, a life insurance company that did not use accurate actuarial data with regard to the extent that obesity increases the probability of death would soon be out of business.

There are over 12 million overweight diabetics in the USA today. More that 95% have never tried Byetta. Unless the life insurance actuarial data is wrong, many tens of thousands of those people will die next year, who would not have died if they had used Byetta.