The Nice Ozempic Rip-off

Many of the meals in America comes from only a few crops like corn, wheat, soy, and canola, largely as a result of farming subsidies that pressure farmers to mass-produce these crops and promote them beneath price. These low-cost crops are then became the processed meals we eat every single day. 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, just a few 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

Now and again, we get a clue about what goes on behind the scenes within the pharmaceutical trade (e.g., see this text and this text in regards to 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 personal 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 for the reason that pandemic began.

Given this occasion’s immense affect on the pharmaceutical sector (because it caters to massive buyers), it’s necessary to spotlight just a few issues that have been introduced on the convention web site.³ First, contemplate how enthusiastically they endorsed the profitability of two new sorts of medicine:

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

Be aware: The GLP-1 medicine embrace Trulicity, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Byetta, and Ozempic.⁴

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

Be aware: 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 as a result of his immense pharmaceutical conflicts of curiosity.⁵

To repeat — the pinnacle of the FDA was a keynote speaker to buyers in regards to the extremely profitable alternative they might count on from these new medicine — implying that the FDA would do every part it may to push them by. 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 medicine was simply granted accelerated approval.”

Be aware: 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 specialists on the panel resigning, with one stating it was “most likely the worst drug approval resolution in current US historical past”).

Shortly afterward, the FDA gave a glowing press launch on their approval of the drug⁷ — however as a result of how unsafe and ineffective the drug was, even with the FDA’s endorsement, reasonably than turn into 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 medicine and the suppression of confirmed (however un-patentable) remedies for the illness right here.

The Rise of Ozempic (Semaglutide)

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

Right here as an illustration, 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 individuals to hunt alternate options.¹⁰ The push to increase Ozempic’s market has focused varied 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. Youngsters — The FDA accredited semaglutide for overweight youngsters 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 revealed a set of authoritative set of pointers¹⁴ 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 price ($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 medicine, 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 committee to permit Medicare protection,¹⁶ which may price between $3.1 to $6 billion yearly if handed.¹⁷

This raises a vital query: Why was Medicare initially prohibited from protecting weight problems remedies?

The Rise and Fall of Fen-Phen

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

In 1979, a professor of medical pharmacology and director of an FDA division for approving new medicine believed weight problems wanted to be handled as a medical (reasonably than way of life) 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 revealed 20 years later, it immediately grew to become wildly common.

As phrase unfold, demand surged, turning many docs’ places of work into tablet mills²¹ catering to determined sufferers. Nevertheless, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than the drug was linked to extreme coronary heart valve harm²² 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 protected.²⁴

What’s notably alarming is that lots of the points we see immediately with Ozempic — aggressive advertising, off-label makes use of, and a deal with 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 induced, however this time round, the FDA as a substitute is working with the trade to push these medicine.

The Dangers and Advantages of Ozempic

Previous to the GLP-1s being marketed as anti-obesity medicine, a lot 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 medicine they might use and glorious clinicians, I took their opinions into severe consideration.

Nevertheless, I additionally observed that I used to be repeatedly seeing sufferers develop uncommon gastrointestinal issues from the medicine (together with one hospitalization of a distant relative), so I held to the angle the medicine have been too new for his or her dangers to be totally appreciated.

After they began getting used as weight reduction brokers (the place their dose is way larger — 0.5 mg to 1.0 mg vs. 1.7 mg to 2.4 mg — often being nearly 5 occasions larger), we began noticing that we’d see an increasing number of sufferers who ought to have by no means been prescribed the drug and are taking sufficient of it (typically 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 greatest demonstrated by what has come to be often known as the “Ozempic Face”:

Be aware: Many healthcare professionals at the moment are noticing an epidemic of Ozempic facilitated consuming issues.²⁶

I then seemed into the info on the GLP-1 medicine and observed a curious sample — similar to fen-phen, the load misplaced was quickly regained as soon as the drug was stopped. As an instance, listed below are just a few graphs from the pivotal trials of those medicine.

First, utilizing the complete (2.4 mg) dose of Wegovy (which like Ozempic is one other identify for semaglutide) every week, inadvertently reveals that many of the individuals couldn’t keep on the medicine for a protracted interval:²⁷

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

Third, when the results 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 may keep on the drug):

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

In brief, 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 the perfect deal.

Conversely, I think a key purpose why this aspect impact has been publicized is that the purpose of the pharmaceutical trade is all the time to have a lot of individuals 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 situation however creates insupportable withdrawals when one stops (e.g., the SSRI antidepressants or the PPI acid reflux disease medicines) is “good for enterprise.”

Sadly, along with being a rip-off, Ozempic has just a few main points. First, the GLP-1 medicine have been designed to withstand being damaged down throughout the physique, so they might 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 answerable for slowing digestion within the physique, medicine like Ozempic considerably sluggish digestion and might create quite a lot of gastrointestinal points from doing so (e.g., a examine of 25,617 real-world sufferers discovered these medicine trigger a 3.5 occasions improve within the charge of intestinal obstruction³³).

Second, extreme unwanted effects are fairly widespread. Probably the most complete examine³⁴ I’ve discovered of the extreme unwanted effects of GLP-1 medicine (e.g., Ozempic) sourced from 16 million sufferers’ medical information discovered that the medicine have been strongly linked to quite a lot of unwanted effects that often 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 larger threat of pancreatitis
• 4.22 occasions larger threat of bowel obstruction
• 3.67 occasions larger threat of gastroparesis (which suggests you’ll be able to barely eat as a result of the abdomen is continually full — and in lots of instances after Ozempic, finally ends up being everlasting)
• 1.48 occasions larger threat of biliary illness (e.g., painful gallstones)

Third, extreme opposed 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 individuals on the load loss dose of Ozempic:

Likewise, contemplate what number of opposed 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 resembling gastroparesis, lawsuits are additionally rising³⁷ for different extreme situations resembling imaginative and prescient loss.

Moreover, animal experiments are displaying³⁸ it distorts the structure of the small gut (which might result in poor nutrient absorption or power intestinal obstructions), and lots of the GLP-1 drug labels state the medicine could also be linked to thyroid most cancers.

Be aware: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 often 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 typical theme behind faculty shootings).

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

This will likely partially, clarify why a examine⁴⁰ discovered that Ozempic induced a forty five% elevated threat 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 repeatedly rising and that, like many different power diseases, we haven’t been given a proof for why it’s occurring.

Affordable explanations for this improve embrace:

Nevertheless, reasonably than taking these into severe consideration, we’re merely being advised the true reply is a lifetime of Ozempic. Fortuitously 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 truth most healthcare professionals don’t recognize — medical pointers are largely a product of financial issues reasonably than scientific proof.

Fortuitously, nature all the time has a method of bringing issues again into steadiness, and because the corruption inside our medical system has reached the purpose of absurdity and an increasing number of clearly harmful medicine are being pushed onto the general public by our regulators, the general public is awakening to their lies and changing into much less and receptive to “trusting the specialists.” On this vein, I consider the Ozempic state of affairs is a pivotal second in time, because the tables have turned for the reason that occasions of Fen-Phen.

Now, reasonably 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 want these pointless and damaging medicine pushed on their children.

Be aware: That is an abridged article. In the complete 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 Be aware from Dr. Mercola Concerning the Writer

A Midwestern Physician (AMD) is a board-certified doctor and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I recognize AMD’s distinctive perception on a variety of subjects, and I am grateful to share them with them. I additionally respect AMD’s want to stay nameless since AMD remains to be on the entrance strains treating sufferers. To search out extra of AMD’s work, you’ll want to take a look at The Forgotten Facet of Medication on Substack.