The Nice Ozempic Rip-off

Many of the meals in America comes from only a few crops like corn, wheat, soy, and canola, largely because of farming subsidies that pressure farmers to mass-produce these crops and promote them beneath value. These low cost crops are then became the processed meals we eat on daily basis. That is problematic as a result of:

For years, activists like Dr. Mercola have pushed for consciousness of the significance of pure meals and the necessity to change farming subsidies to advertise wholesome consuming. The present media local weather, pushed by skepticism of the COVID-19 response and the rise of unbiased media, has revealed the systematic failures in our meals provide and allowed these long-cultivated concepts to start bursting into public consciousness.

For instance, a number of weeks in the past, shortly after gaining the nationwide highlight and the necessity to make America Wholesome Once more by liberating us from pervasive regulatory corruption, RFK Jr. was invited onto Fox Information to debate the risks of seed oils and synthetic meals colorings with a supportive newscaster — one thing I’d by no means earlier than seen within the nationwide media.

Pharmaceutical Gross sales

From time to time, we get a clue about what goes on behind the scenes within the pharmaceutical trade (e.g., see this text and this text concerning the sociopathic sales-focused tradition inside Pfizer). One notably telling occasion was a presentation GSK gave their gross sales reps for Advair, which I consider is consultant of the mentality of this trade:

Final 12 months Kim Witczak,² a pharmaceutical security advocate, tipped me off about JP Morgan’s annual healthcare convention, a non-public invitation-only occasion described by JP Morgan as “the trade’s largest gathering.” The forty first convention, from January 9-12, 2023, was the primary occasion hosted in individual because the pandemic began.

Given this occasion’s immense affect on the pharmaceutical sector (because it caters to giant traders), it’s vital to spotlight a number of issues that have been introduced on the convention web site.³ First, contemplate how enthusiastically they endorsed the profitability of two new varieties of medication:

In that video, crucial half was Chase’s projections for this new trade:

Notice: The GLP-1 medication embody Trulicity, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Byetta, and Ozempic.⁴

Second, contemplate who the keynote audio system at Chase’s convention have been:

Notice: After I initially publicized this convention, elements of it have been deleted (e.g., one of many above movies and Califf being listed because the keynote speaker). Califf has lengthy been an extremely controversial FDA commissioner because of his immense pharmaceutical conflicts of curiosity.⁵

To repeat — the top of the FDA was a keynote speaker to traders concerning the extremely profitable alternative they may anticipate from these new medication — implying that the FDA would do every little thing it might to push them by way of. Because it so occurred, to cite Witczak:

“Fascinating to additionally word, Califf was the keynote speaker on opening day and out of the blue, the FDA granted accelerated approval to the second controversial Biogen Alzheimer drug on Friday [three days before the conference] with out an Advisory Committee. How nice to have the ability to announce to the healthcare biotech trade that considered one of their new medication was simply granted accelerated approval.”

Notice: An much more controversial approval had proceeded it⁶ (the place the FDA overrode its personal panel to approve an costly, harmful, and ineffective Alzheimer’s drug which resulted in three of the consultants on the panel resigning, with one stating it was “in all probability the worst drug approval choice in current US historical past”).

Shortly afterward, the FDA gave a glowing press launch on their approval of the drug⁷ — however because of how unsafe and ineffective the drug was, even with the FDA’s endorsement, relatively than grow to be the subsequent blockbuster drug, it abjectly failed out there and is now being discontinued by the producer.⁸ For these , I mentioned the immense scandal with present Alzheimer’s medication and the suppression of confirmed (however un-patentable) therapies for the illness right here.

The Rise of Ozempic (Semaglutide)

As soon as I noticed this convention, provided that it units the course for the complete trade, I turned satisfied that Ozempic would quickly be aggressively marketed, with the FDA backing the growth of its use. This prediction rapidly turned a actuality, with widespread promotion and endorsements of the drug, paying homage to the beginning of the opioid disaster.

Right here as an example, are excerpts of two extensively seen interviews by Casey and Calley Means describing the staggering corruption that has facilitated Ozempic’s speedy rise all through America:

Sadly, the marketing campaign has been so profitable that there is now a scarcity of Ozempic,⁹ driving folks to hunt alternate options.¹⁰ The push to broaden Ozempic’s market has focused numerous demographics, together with:

1. African People — Ozempic’s producer paid civil rights teams to foyer for the drug, framing any opposition as perpetuating systemic racism.^11,12

2. Kids — The FDA accredited semaglutide for overweight kids 12 and older¹³ simply earlier than the Chase convention regardless of issues about long-term results, and on the primary day of the Chase convention, the American Academy of Pediatrics printed a set of authoritative set of tips¹⁴ for treating childhood weight problems which strongly endorsed giving them the GLP-1’s:

3. The aged — One main impediment to promoting Ozempic is its excessive value ($1,000 to $1,500 monthly), making it unaffordable with out insurance coverage. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 prohibits Medicare from protecting weight reduction medication, however the trade has been lobbying to overturn this.

An “weight problems rights” coalition, (funded by Ozempic’s producer),¹⁵ has efficiently superior a regulation by way of committee to permit Medicare protection,¹⁶ which might value between $3.1 to $6 billion yearly if handed.¹⁷

This raises a important query: Why was Medicare initially prohibited from protecting weight problems therapies?

The Rise and Fall of Fen-Phen

A recurring theme I’ve explored is how medical catastrophes usually repeat as a result of we neglect the teachings from the previous. The present rush for Ozempic is strikingly much like the fen-phen catastrophe of the Nineteen Nineties. Phentermine¹⁸ (launched to the USA in 1959) and fenfluramine¹⁹ (launched to the USA in 1973) have been two marginally efficient weight reduction medication that by no means caught on.

In 1979, a professor of scientific pharmacology and director of an FDA division for approving new medication believed weight problems wanted to be handled as a medical (relatively than life-style) illness and determined to see in the event that they’d work higher as soon as mixed.²⁰ Fen-phen “labored,” and when his examine was lastly printed 20 years later, it immediately turned wildly common.

As phrase unfold, demand surged, turning many docs’ workplaces into tablet mills²¹ catering to determined sufferers. Nevertheless, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than the drug was linked to extreme coronary heart valve injury²² and pulmonary hypertension,²³ resulting in its elimination from the market and billions of {dollars} in authorized settlements. Remarkably, as soon as the mud had settled, the FDA official who pushed Fen-Phen onto the market admitted it by no means occurred to him to confirm the drug mixture was certainly secure.²⁴

What’s notably alarming is that lots of the points we see immediately with Ozempic — aggressive advertising and marketing, off-label makes use of, and a give attention to revenue over affected person security — mirror the errors made with fen-phen. Again then, the FDA ultimately stepped in to ban the drug after realizing the extent of the hurt it precipitated, however this time round, the FDA as a substitute is working with the trade to push these medication.

The Dangers and Advantages of Ozempic

Previous to the GLP-1s being marketed as anti-obesity medication, lots of my colleagues believed they have been fairly useful for diabetes. On condition that a few of these colleagues have been pretty conservative with which medication they’d use and glorious clinicians, I took their opinions into critical consideration.

Nevertheless, I additionally seen that I used to be repeatedly seeing sufferers develop uncommon gastrointestinal problems from the medication (together with one hospitalization of a distant relative), so I held to the attitude the medication have been too new for his or her dangers to be absolutely appreciated.

After they began getting used as weight reduction brokers (the place their dose is far greater — 0.5 mg to 1.0 mg vs. 1.7 mg to 2.4 mg — ceaselessly being nearly 5 occasions higher), we began noticing that we’d see increasingly more sufferers who ought to have by no means been prescribed the drug and are taking sufficient of it (usually even overdosing) to drive themselves into cachexia.²⁵

These sufferers are straightforward to establish as they don’t look regular and have a considerably sick and considerably anorexic look since they’re ravenous themselves. That is finest demonstrated by what has come to be referred to as the “Ozempic Face”:

Notice: Many healthcare professionals are actually noticing an epidemic of Ozempic facilitated consuming issues.²⁶

I then seemed into the information on the GLP-1 medication and seen a curious sample — identical to fen-phen, the burden misplaced was quickly regained as soon as the drug was stopped. As an instance, listed here are a number of graphs from the pivotal trials of those medication.

First, utilizing the total (2.4 mg) dose of Wegovy (which like Ozempic is one other title for semaglutide) every week, inadvertently exhibits that a lot of the members couldn’t keep on the medication for a chronic interval:²⁷

Second, when given to kids, they started regaining their misplaced weight as soon as they stopped the drug:²⁸

Third, when the consequences of withdrawing the drug have been examined,²⁹ the misplaced weight was clearly proven to return (alongside a gradual decline within the quantity of people that might keep on the drug):

Notice: The load regained³⁰ was proportional to the burden initially misplaced.

Briefly, having to spend 1000 {dollars} a month for a little bit of weight reduction, which then disappears when you cease the drug, will not be one of the best deal.

Conversely, I think a key cause why this facet impact has been publicized is that the aim of the pharmaceutical trade is all the time to have numerous folks perpetually utilizing a excessive revenue margin product (e.g., a month-to-month course of the thousand greenback Ozempic prices lower than 5 {dollars} to make),³¹ so any product which doesn’t repair the underlying challenge however creates insupportable withdrawals when one stops (e.g., the SSRI antidepressants or the PPI acid reflux disorder drugs) is “good for enterprise.”

Sadly, along with being a rip-off, Ozempic has a number of main points. First, the GLP-1 medication have been designed to withstand being damaged down inside the physique, so they’d solely must be injected as soon as every week (ensuing of their common half-life being roughly seven days, whereas the pure GLP-1 protein has a half-life between 1.5 to five minutes³²).

For the reason that GLP-1 is accountable for slowing digestion within the physique, medication like Ozempic considerably gradual digestion and may create quite a lot of gastrointestinal points from doing so (e.g., a examine of 25,617 real-world sufferers discovered these medication trigger a 3.5 occasions enhance within the price of intestinal obstruction³³).

Second, extreme unwanted effects are fairly widespread. Essentially the most complete examine³⁴ I’ve discovered of the extreme unwanted effects of GLP-1 medication (e.g., Ozempic) sourced from 16 million sufferers’ medical information discovered that the medication have been strongly linked to quite a lot of unwanted effects that ceaselessly required hospitalization. Particularly, when in comparison with one other weight reduction mixture not sometimes related to these results, GLP-1 customers have been discovered to have:

• 9.09 occasions higher danger of pancreatitis
• 4.22 occasions higher danger of bowel obstruction
• 3.67 occasions higher danger of gastroparesis (which suggests you may barely eat as a result of the abdomen is consistently full — and in lots of circumstances after Ozempic, finally ends up being everlasting)
• 1.48 occasions higher danger of biliary illness (e.g., painful gallstones)

Third, extreme adversarial occasions are sometimes a lot rarer than reasonable or minor ones. Given how frequent these extreme results are, it ought to come as no shock that much less extreme ones are much more widespread. For instance, contemplate a examine³⁵ of 175 folks on the burden loss dose of Ozempic:

Likewise, contemplate what number of adversarial occasions³⁶ have been acknowledged inside a trial sponsored by Ozempic’s producer:

Sadly, these aren’t the one unwanted effects. For instance, along with lawsuits being filed towards Ozempic for gastrointestinal issues corresponding to gastroparesis, lawsuits are additionally rising³⁷ for different extreme situations corresponding to imaginative and prescient loss.

Moreover, animal experiments are exhibiting³⁸ it distorts the structure of the small gut (which might result in poor nutrient absorption or persistent intestinal obstructions), and lots of the GLP-1 drug labels state the medication could also be linked to thyroid most cancers.

Notice: In a earlier sequence, I mentioned one of many largest points with the SSRI antidepressants — as a result of they’re given at a really excessive dose, people ceaselessly expertise extreme withdrawals³⁹ when their dose is modified. These withdrawals, in flip can set off suicidal habits, psychosis, or violent habits, which is usually homicidal (and a standard theme behind faculty shootings).

A serious challenge with Ozempic is that because it slows the speed at which the abdomen empties, it alters and delays the absorption of psychiatric drugs. For the reason that customers are sometimes very delicate to modifications of their dose, many reviews now exist on-line of great psychiatric destabilization occurring in Ozempic customers who have been additionally on psychiatric drugs.

This may increasingly partly, clarify why a examine⁴⁰ discovered that Ozempic precipitated a forty five% elevated danger of suicidal ideation, and that elevated to 345% in those that have been already taking SSRI antidepressants.

What Causes Weight problems

In America’s case, it’s very clear that weight problems has been constantly rising and that, like many different persistent sicknesses, we haven’t been given an evidence for why it’s occurring.

Cheap explanations for this enhance embody:

Nevertheless, relatively than taking these into critical consideration, we’re merely being advised the true reply is a lifetime of Ozempic. Happily nevertheless, the altering political panorama is providing an actual hope to reverse this tide of weight problems and corruption we face.

Conclusion

The Ozempic story is egregious, however it additionally critically illuminates a reality most healthcare professionals don’t admire — medical tips are largely a product of financial issues relatively than scientific proof.

Happily, nature all the time has a means of bringing issues again into steadiness, and because the corruption inside our medical system has reached the purpose of absurdity and increasingly more clearly harmful medication are being pushed onto the general public by our regulators, the general public is awakening to their lies and turning into much less and receptive to “trusting the consultants.” On this vein, I consider the Ozempic state of affairs is a pivotal second in time, because the tables have turned because the occasions of Fen-Phen.

Now, relatively than the resistance to its deployment upon the populace coming from the regulators, it’s generated by on a regular basis People who don’t need these pointless and damaging medication pushed on their children.

Notice: That is an abridged article. In the total model, I talk about the above factors in additional element and discover the causes of meals cravings alongside pure strategies for restoring metabolic well being and regaining a wholesome weight. For extra sources and hyperlinks on this topic, click on right here.

A Notice from Dr. Mercola Concerning the Writer

A Midwestern Physician (AMD) is a board-certified doctor and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I admire AMD’s distinctive perception on a variety of matters, and I am grateful to share them with them. I additionally respect AMD’s need to stay nameless since AMD continues to be on the entrance traces treating sufferers. To seek out extra of AMD’s work, make sure you take a look at The Forgotten Aspect of Drugs on Substack.