Why is Serena Williams' Fat Drug Endorsement Insidious?

Recently tennis great Serena Williams joined Ro, a direct-to-consumer (DTC) health care player, in promoting the GLP-1 agonist fat drugs like Ozempic. While Williams has always appeared "of size" if not fat, no one could accuse her of not exercising.

"Williams and Ro will lead a multi-year campaign to normalize the use of GLP-1 medications for weight loss and support others on their health journeys," says the press release.

Is Williams any bigger than she was? Or does Williams, like so many past-their-expiration-date celebrities, need a new income stream?

Why is Williams' fat drug promotion--not really necessary since the drug class is a block buster--insidious?

1. Direct-to-patient and direct-to-consumer corporations seek--successfully--to eliminate "middle men" like real doctors, clinicians and pharmacies to monetize drugs. Like street drug dealers, they rely on self-diagnosis, Impetuousness and quick, no-questions-asked transactions to sell product. The closing of top pharmacy chains show they are succeeding.

2. It defies belief but in the US the role of burgeoning fast-food marketing, addictive ingredients and vending machine and snack ubiquity in the obesity epidemic is ignored. The elephant in the room, pun intended. Big Food is too lucrative an advertiser.

In the UK, advertisements for fattening and fast foods are banned in certain high population areas, such as commuter trains. UK clinicians and health policy people have observed the ad ban works with fewer obese people.

3. GLP-1 agonists may please Wall Street and enrich drug makers but their health risks are emerging as the public, the de facto guinea pigs, embraces the drugs. There is the emaciated "Ozempic face," muscle loss, "Ozempic mouth" of cavities and gum disease and the well documented eye disease of non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) linked to vision loss.

4. Corporations have hijacked health care with vertical integration like Ro--which "diagnoses," prescribes and delivers the goods--pathologizing normal conditions. No one is "born fat" but healthy people make no one money. Convincing people they are sick like with the "disease" of obesity of course does.

Reject Fattening Food and Fattening Food Ads

Almost a third of Americans between 17 and 24 are too fat to join the US military says the CDC. The size of operating room tables, ambulances and coffins is increasing. Big Food corporations made people fat and now they are handing them off to Big Pharma. Do these people reahave GLP-1 agonist deficiencies?

(Article changed on Sep 05, 2025 at 1:37 PM EDT)