By: Matthew Fantazzi
Move over mRNA vaccines, Ozempic and Wagovy are breaking through as the hottest drugs on the market in 2023. This is a group of injectable diabetes drugs are a family of peptides that bind to receptors that stimulate insulin production from the pancreas, it also delays the emptying of the stomach which makes people feel full longer allowing them to curb eating and lose weight. The acclaimed wonder drugs have led to huge dividends for manufacturer Norvo-Nordisk, who now is conducting studies to see if the drug can be used to treat a number of conditions from heart disease to Alzheimer's. However, as more and more patients are given the drugs, they appear to come with more risk than the manufacturers let on initially in the massive sales pitch that came with these medications. Complete with celebrity endorsements, fraudulent studies, catchy ad jingles, nightly news segments, fully backed by regulators, insurance companies, and doctors. One claim attempts to rewrite human biology to justify the prescribing of these meds for children by saying obesity is a disease that is genetically predetermined, and diet and exercise are secondary factors. I wish that last one was hyperbole, but the pharmaganda knows no bounds I'm afraid. I am going to go through the propaganda campaign and show you how big pharma operates, and how the incentives created have compromised the medical system. This isn't anything special unfortunately, these are standard practices for manufacturers in the medical field, this is a playbook that is run constantly to promote the latest pill, shot, procedure, device, etc.
Keep in mind, that all of the risks associated with these drugs, are deemed acceptable in an effort to cure the patient of obesity. A true American pandemic caused by a compromised food system, that is engineered to make people fat, sick, and addicted to over sweetened and ultra processed food-like substances devoid of any true nutritional value. Fed to a culture that favors convenience and instant gratification over hard work and accountability. This makes a sedentary lifestyle, addicted to screens and social media, more appealing than socializing, getting out perusing adventure and excitement in nature like we used to. Each new problem exacerbating the one before it, leaving you hopeless, trying every new diet and fitness trend that comes up with little to no results. Until finally you hear the Ozempic ad, with its catchy song, and happy people frolicking about loving life, and it says it can help with weight loss, just talk to your doctor.
Let's start unpacking the lies and fraud used to push these dangerous drugs on the masses instead of diet and exercise, as well as the harm done to patients as a result.
This piece is really going to focus more so on the marketing than the science of how the drug works and why they don't deliver, though it will be touched on.
All articles and studies referenced will be linked in the order they are mentioned at the bottom of the article.
The X's and O's of a Pharmaganda Playbook
When a new market opens up for a pharma product, it can happen organically, or in some cases, like with the covid shots, by force. Either way, once it begins to emerge, the manufacturers will begin pouring money into promoting the product using a number of different marketing strategies that go far beyond your typical commercial. Ozempic, like most fads started in Hollywood, there began to be a wave of actors, musicians, and tv personalities that proclaimed this drug Ozempic was to credit for their massive weight loss in preparing for their latest role. Everyone from Oprah to Jenifer Lopez, Jessica Simpson, to Chris Pratt, it became all the rage in Hollywood. (Article on celeb endorsements) This was the beginning, in combination with big payouts for online influencers on social media promoting the so-called body positivity movement, who are being paid by the processed food companies whose ownership overlaps with pharma companies in many cases. This would include creators making posts of the foods and eating habits that they practice and demand they be accepted and even praised for their unhealthy habits and any criticism labeled "fatphobic". Tragically this lifestyle has led to the demise of several of the most popular faces of the movement. They have served the purpose of their investors though and added to the customer base for their pharma partners. (Article regarding Influencers that died underage of 45)
With the influencers and the stars creating the interest now it's time to get experts in the field to back the emotional arguments being sold to the desperate customers with data and facts. All the tv doctors and weight loss white coats giving you a very sciency answer that sounds smart, researched, and delivered with precision by the authority on the given topic, don't worry if it's true, or omitting some pertinent information. (it's not, and they are) This article highlights a doctor who would speak at conferences to his fellow physicians and tell them about the wonder drug from Novo and the fantastic results his patients are seeing. The article then points out that he has received $1.4M from the drug maker, and the company had spent up to $25M on paying medical professionals to promote their product. Neither case is terribly noteworthy since this is the industry standard.
Now that the influencers have been confirmed by the experts, que the ads that let patients know they can ask their doctors if Ozempic is right for them. It should be pointed out too, it is illegal for companies to advertise medication, for reasons obvious to every nation in the world except for two, the United States and New Zealand. Ads for these weight-loss drugs have received a massive investment from the pharma companies to the tune of $500M this year. The signal has been sent to the universities and research institutes to publish studies to justify prescribing this drug to millions of people, and insurance companies need to be covering this medication or else no one can afford it because Novo charges Americans $1,000-$1,300 per injection while charging other countries no more than $300, America routinely pays more than the rest of the world for their drugs. This has to do with an entity created to negotiate pharmaceutical prices on behalf of the people called pharmacy benefit managers to negotiate drug prices as a third-party middleman between drug companies and insurance companies. Within about ten years the drug companies have bought off or bought up all of these companies and essentially set their own prices, but I digress. Now the drug companies need the regulators and government agencies to get the drugs on the state healthcare plan. At this point pharma decided that it needed to go after leaders of the black community to get them to advocate for including the drug in Medicare coverage.
Not exactly sure how that works, but getting the insurance coverage for this off label use of the drugs is crucial in forcing it as an option for doctors. This is one of the major flaws in the medical system, the insurance companies and the drug companies are essentially the ones writing treatment plans based on profits not patients.
Trust the Fraud
Here comes the linchpin to the whole operation, the complicity of the scientific community. Once seen as pillars of academia the scientific community, through covid and years of regulatory capture and continuous scandal, they should be viewed as mere cogs in the pharmaganda machine. In order to justify insurance companies covering the meds there needs to be studies to show that they are safe and effective. So, Novo and their fellow manufacturers got the check book out and ordered the studies with those results. When trying to determine credibility of a study, the first thing to check is who conducted and funded the study, and when it's the manufacturer of the drug seeking approval, I would want another study. These companies have a history of dictating the outcome of the study before its conducted, paying for the result before the experiment and even outright lying about the results of the studies. The studies lead to a flood of articles appearing that present the findings by Novo Nordis or one of their paid mouthpieces masquerading as a medical journal as legitimate. For example, an article gleefully reports on a new study has discovered Ozempic MAY (key word) be good for your heart, for your brain, maybe even heal dementia and addiction! Of course, none of this turns out to actually be true, in a few months when 3rd party groups can analyze patient data will find that these results are not likely, but hey look at that bump in the stock price.
Here's one study conducted by Novo posted on their website, that shows wagovy reduced the risk of cardiovascular events in patients without diabetes.
In one of the most shameful examples pediatricians conducted a study prescribing the drugs to teens to treat weight loss, even going as far as to say that these drugs may help with depression due to increased confidence from losing weight. Again, these are teens, who should have no problem with obesity or depression, and if they do, pumping them full of drugs should not be the solution presented by any reasonable physician.
Now that public has been fully propagandized, regulators and insurers have prioritized the medication, and the doctors have been told how great this treatment strategy has been working by their colleague/Pharma rep. Even American Airlines is all in, publishing an article on their website saying how much money they'd save if everyone started taking it! One can only imagine what they were paid to publish such a cartoonish endorsement.
The playbook has resulted in another huge score for team pharma, and big wins for the tens of millions of new customers since they're all losing weight and living happily ever after...
Right?....Right!?
Better Late than Never, the Truth Arrives
This is a typical cycle in the medical field, a new drug gets promoted by the pharmaganda machine, the public eats it up, months, years, sometimes decades go by and people begin to experience side effects that had been previously dismissed as rare and experience them quite often in fact. Once it generates too much noise to ignore, some class action lawsuits begin, some billion-dollar fines are issued, pharma gets out the check book and just includes that in the cost of doing business, and a few billion is nothing when they just made 10 billion, what's a few hundred thousand lives ruined? List of biggest pharma fines.
Now that Ozempic and its kin have been prescribed to people for years to treat obesity, we have reached the point in the cycle where the side effects are beginning to cause an uproar that pharma and the medical establishment can't ignore. Along with articles like this from the Daily Mail where a patient was one of a few dozen to have a severe allergic reaction and had their skin peeling and burning. Terms like "Ozempic face" are beginning to trend on various platforms, and quickly the pharma companies pay big time advertising dollars to commission a wave of opinion pieces from doctors and health magazines defending the drug and telling people how they can mitigate or treat the facial paralysis instead of finding another solution to their obesity problem. Here is a search for the term Ozempic face and every article is giving some kind of justification for people to accept this effect.
One of the mechanisms of action stated earlier is delaying the emptying of the stomach, well in some cases that became extended or permanent, paralyzing the stomach, causing misery for those patients, and who knows what complications it led to, highlighted in this Rolling Stone article. Then a Journal of American Medical Association study, that was looking at the effects over 2 years of using the drugs, the study showed that patients were at high risk of gastrointestinal issues.
Another article highlighting the cases of suicide and depression that are showing up in Europe alarming European doctors. Europe often relies on the American research to set policies, only to find later the studies done in America missed some major risks or issues with various medications and procedures leading to them to divert from American practices in some cases. European safety standards are much higher than American when it comes to food, medicine, and production processes in many other industries, this leads to companies using the banned substances that usually reduce the cost to make the subpar American product, and the higher quality version that meets European standards.
In the article the doctor can't seem to understand why patients experience this, in functional medicine the gut-brain connection is highlighted and the link between mental health and gut health is well established and there are many books and studies on the topic so I won't go into the weeds here. To see the mental health problems follow the GI problems is not surprising.
These drugs are altering the way that your stomach and intestine's function, this has consequences that can cause a cascade effect that can reach out to other areas of the body. The level of function of the body depends on absorbing the nutrients from the food in the stomach, so if these medications are disrupting that process in any way, this will lead to a downstream symptom or condition, that typically will lead to others, creating this cascading effect. Doctors are now saying that the drugs are having an effect on the brains addiction center and can be used to treat other addictions. The term food noise has been trending because patients are siting less intrusive thoughts about food. So, the thinking is this might apply to other addictions as well, which if it causes depression and anxiety which will require a new addiction, I'm not really sure what is gained other than number of medications prescribed. I didn't take the time to check, but this notion is being put forth by "leading weight loss doctors", I would be curious if they were on the Novo payroll like the example in the previous article though.
This is a common drug loop that people get caught up in, it goes something like this. A patient is suffering from trauma, or some sort of micronutrient deficiency resulting in depression, so they see the psychiatrist who gives them antidepressants, sometimes multiple, which has a side effect of weight gain, then they need something for the weight gain, which exacerbates the need for antidepressants, meanwhile the underlying micronutrient deficiency is not addressed and all of these stressors are building until the patient reaches a breaking point and will likely end up in the hospital.
The Simple Answer
It's really something to think of all the billions of dollars that goes into these meds, the treatment of the side effects, the research, the bribing of scientists, journals, influencers, actors, news companies, and on and on. Shows that the motive is clearly not helping patients lose weight, because for a fraction of the cost you could educate every one of these patients on diet and nutrition, exercise, and overall healthy habits.
We are talking about obesity here, even diabetes is a disease that really should not be that common and is absolutely reversable in most cases as demonstrated by Dr. Cate Shannahan in her book, The Fat Burn Fix. She lays out dietary adjustments that she uses to help patients reverse their type two diabetes in a matter of months. To summarize, she puts the blame on the processed foods, and has the receipts and the credentials to back up her arguments. These producers slip sugar into just about everything, and it is ultra processed sugar like high fructose corn syrup, this combined with the highly processed hydrogenated vegetable oils known as seed oils. These two things act together to corrupt the bodies energy burning system we call metabolism, which should be flexible and able to switch between burning fat or sugar depending on what is available. With sugar being snuck into everything and the seed oils being higher in a type of fat that the body has a lower preference for when building proteins, the metabolism gets stuck on using sugar, leaving the fat to build up and leading to obesity and metabolic inflexibility, insulin resistance, and eventually diabetes. Dr. Cate argues that these oils may be to blame for the rise in nearly all modern illness. When these less desirable fats are used to rebuild our bodies tissues and cells it compromises our cell membranes integrity. It's an argument that I feel has some merit, and she is not alone with many others focusing on mitochondrial disfunction as the root cause of many chronic illnesses. Sadly, most people will never hear about Dr. Cate and her dietary solutions for diabetes, obesity, and a host of other illnesses, drown out by the bouncing melody of "O-O-Ozempic..."
The moral of this story is that there are no magic bullets, whenever the pharma companies try to sell you the answer in a pill, shot, or even surgery, almost without exception, not only do they not fix the problem they were assigned to treat, but they add a host of side effects on top of the original ailment.
Nature knows best, and our bodies are programed to heal, nature never anticipated any pharmaceutical intervention, it may take some discipline and time in order for the body to completely recover depending on the condition. In nearly any case if you can give the body what it needs to heal, it will do so to varying degrees.
This is the ethos of Health Yourself, we need to change the way we think about health and medicine. In America we feel a pain in our stomach but avoid the doctor as long as we can until we absolutely can't bear it anymore and end up in the hospital with an ulcer. Instead of feeling the pain early on and knowing we shouldn't be feeling pain if we are healthy, and addressing the problem then with some functional testing, identify the root cause of the pain, and what in our environment is causing it, remove the stressor, repair the gut lining, and avoid the hospital. The sad truth is our medical system is incentivized to keep you coming back and reliant on them in order to be healthy. If you want to optimize your health you have to take action, do some research, start listening to your body when it tells you things by presenting different symptoms. Continuing to choose to put your health in the hands of these institutions that we all agree are interested in your wallet not your health, is a choice no one should be forced to make. This can be a lot to take on alone but that is why people like me exist, to walk with you as you start your health journey, so if you have any questions start asking! Always happy to help.
Articles and Studies Referenced
-News Details (novonordisk.com) Cardiac benefits with wagovy study
-Medscape Registration - article on Suicide and Depression risks
-Buy The Fatburn Fix: Boost Energy, End Hunger, And Lose Weight By Using Body Fat For Fuel Book By: Catherine Shanahan (secondsale.com)
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