I don’t know who writes the headlines for Science Digest, but they suck at it: Experimental Drug Achieves Unprecedented Weight Loss, Clinical Trial Finds. About that weight loss:
An investigational combination of drugs already approved to treat obesity, migraine and epilepsy produced up to a 10 percent weight loss in obese individuals participating in a one-year clinical trial, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center. …
“The combination drug achieves about 19 pounds of weight loss relative to placebo at one year,” Gadde [director of Duke's obesity clinical trials program] says.
The 56-week, phase 3 study was conducted in 93 U.S. centers with 2487 patients who had a BMI of 27-45kg/m2, and two or more co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease.
That’s about 1/3rd of a pound per week. That may be “unprecedented” given the sorry state of obesity pharmaceuticals, but not my idea of a good risk (remember fen-phen). It will be interesting to see the FDA’s response.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
While it may not live up to its headline, 20-ish pounds a year (if safe) isn’t a bad thing but I need to hear more. Sad even Science Digest resorts to blowing weight-related news our of proportion.
Yeah, the “if safe” is a big question. That said, it’s unlikely this will be marketed to people with 20 lbs to lose. And it’ll probably be marketed as “people lost a gazillion percent over placebo” — with the 19lbs in a year in 4 pt type somewhere.