The obesity/diabetes drugs, Wygovy and Ozempic have become a pharmaceutical best sellers. They are making the drug companies very wealthy! The active ingredient, semaglutide, helps control blood sugar, lowers appetite, and makes patients feel "full". The current claim of medical science is that these semaglutide drugs can lead to weight loss of more than 10%.
Given the burgeoning epidemic of obesity around the world this claim is an attractive one for so many people who find losing weight difficult. The sales of these drugs increased rapidly in 2023 following their promotion by the mainstream media's on behalf of the drug companies. They were "breakthrough" drugs, we were told by all media outlets.
(Have you noticed how little advertising the pharmaceutical industry has to do for itself? A press release usually does it, with the media content to pass on the advertising, free of charge, without any apparent investigation into the claims being made).
The drawbacks of these drugs are already well known:
- When patients stop taking the drug they put this weight back again.
- The drugs are not recommended for more than two years (so they have to be, or should be stopped within that time, making any gains reversible).
- Such are the concerns about these drugs the UK's NHS only prescribe them to patients who fulfil certain criteria, within a limited number of specialist weight-loss management clinics.
- Semaglutide is already known to cause serious side effects, these including anxiety, bloating, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, confusion, constipation, diarrhoea, depression, fever, headache, indigestion, nightmares, seizures, tightness in the chest, trouble breathing, unusual tiredness or weakness, acid/sour stomach, heartburn, and much more.
To date these disadvantages have not slowed down burgeoning sales, especially as some pharmacies are selling them directly to the public, at a monthly cost of around £100 to £200.
Have we been here before?
- Acomplia was an obesity drug, approved in 2006, and hailed as a new 'wonder drug'.
- In 2008 the drug was refused a licence in the USA, and withdrawn in the UK and Europe, particularly over fears of serious adverse reactions, particularly depression and suicide.
- The medical science, which had proclaimed this wonder drug, was found to be 'faulty'.
"New data from post-marketing experience and ongoing clinical trials indicated that serious psychiatric disorders may be more common than in the clinical trials".
So Acomplia demonstrates better than most pharmaceutical drugs the many aspects of the hopelessness of medical science and drug regulation, which in the interests of selling drugs raise hopes, but lead only to further patient damage.
- The NHS resorts to a drug for a condition that would be better treated via life-style and dietary treatment.
- The drug is significantly less effective than the trials (the medical 'science' funded by the pharmaceutical industry) suggested.
- The full side effects of the drug remain unknown through all the 'scientific' drug testing, the regulator process, the licensing, and the prescription of the drug.
- The side effects turn out to be considerably more serious than the original condition or illness.
- And a drug thought to be unsafe in one country (the USA in this case) is considered to be perfectly 'safe' in others (indeed, most of Europe) - before it is withdrawn there too.