Not since the debut of statins--so amazing they should be put in the water supply some emoted--has a drug class been so hyped for Wall Street. Every day this reporter receives "news" of how glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists like Ozempic and Wegovy (in addition to causing weight loss and treating diabetes) will reduce your risk of stroke, dementia and uterine fibroids, your addiction to alcohol and opioids and your chance of an opioid overdose.
When researchers not funded by the primary GLP-1 makers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk submit that the drugs can cause suicidal ideation, blurred vision, worsening of diabetic retinopathy and macular complications, pancreatitis, bowel obstruction, gastroparesis and biliary disease, drugmaker-funded researchers counteract the charges immediately. No, the drugs don't cause mental and eye and gastric problems--we know because we are paid by the drugmakers and have a lot of their stock!
After statins went often patent--Lipitor was the best-selling drug in the history of the world--it was revealed they were linked to high blood sugar, Type 2 diabetes, liver damage, memory loss and muscle damage. But when they were candidates to be put in the water supply, the word was you could have your bacon cheeseburger with an egg on top and not worry about strokes and heart attacks.
What is going on here? Are we really supposed to believe that an expensive drug is the answer to the harmful and fattening food that is so aggressively hawked and that has made the majority of the US population fat? Even (with both statins and GLP-1 agonists) for children? Is there some kind of collusion between "big food" and "big pharma" going on here? Certainly, food companies are rolling out GLP-1 agonist-specific food according to the Wall Street Journal.
One answer to the hype fest is drugmakers' love affair with "biologics"-- large molecules from living sources like proteins and genes that are cheaper to make than old fashioned pills and more re$istant to generic competition. The money in producing and hawking large molecule biologic medicines is why almost all drug ads on TV these days are for injectables.
Another answer is that a horde of recent biotech companies has discovered that lab-created treatments for obscure diseases have an immediate Wall Street payoff--treatments for common people with common conditions be damned.
The US government itself loves the food/drug profiteering synergy! FDA Commissioner Califf recently called the GLP-1 agonists a "breakthrough class of drugs" and Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, extols the drugs' value in addiction.
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