Should We End Obesity?

It’s unusual for a medication to become a household name; even more uncommon for its branding to become, like Advil, shorthand for an entire class of products; and rarest of all, for it to change not just U.S. medicine, but U.S. culture. Ozempic has done all three. Approved in 2017 as a type 2 diabetes medication, Ozempic has largely made its name—and a fortune for its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk—as a weight-loss aid. Novo Nordisk knew early on that diabetes patients often lost weight on the drug, but even company executives couldn’t have guessed how widely it would eventually take off as both an off-label anti-obesity treatment and a vanity-driven status symbol for those simply looking to shed a few pounds. Its runaway success mirrors that of similar medications, including Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Wegovy, another Novo Nordisk product and the only one in the trio technically approved for weight loss. Prescriptions for all of them are flying off the pad at an eye-popping rate. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Novo Nordisk sold around $14 billion of its various diabetes and obesity drugs in the first half of 2023, and Eli Lilly sold almost $1 billion worth of Mounjaro in a single quarter this year. Prescriptions for these weight-loss meds are up 300% since early 2020, with more than 9 million written in the U.S. in the last three months of 2022 alone, according to health care industry research firm Trilliant Health. Demand is s...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Drugs feature healthscienceclimate Magazine TIME 2030 Wellbeing Source Type: news