Fat Profit – Klartext Translated

by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext

     

   What the mainstream media is hiding

No more dieting? Weight-loss drugs are a reliable way for taxpayers to lose money and weight: First, they unknowingly fund research and development – and then they have to accept exorbitant prices. Big Pharma is laughing up its sleeve once again.

Research by the online news magazine The Lever revealed that US taxpayers covered approximately $6.2 billion in research, development, and distribution costs for GLP-1, the new class of blockbuster weight-loss drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are reaping the profits: With drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy (containing the active ingredient semaglutide), Zepbound, and Mounjaro (containing tirzepatide), market leaders Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly generated sales of nearly $14 billion in 2024; this is expected to rise to $21 billion in 2025, and $49 billion by 2030. “If even one in four of the world’s 800 million overweight people resorts to GLP-1 medications,” calculates the Chicago-based market research firm William Blair, “at an estimated cost of $2,500 per treatment, annual sales could reach $500 billion – one of the largest markets in the history of the biopharmaceutical industry.”

Demand is so enormous that it is already leading to supply shortages worldwide. (1) As of May 2024, more than 15 million Americans – one in eight adults – were taking GLP-1 medications. In the United States alone, at least 25,000 people are starting Wegovy every week. The target audience even includes elementary school students: Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk – which has become Europe’s most valuable company thanks to the hype – is currently conducting Phase 3 trials in which it is administering its newcomer “Saxendra” to six- to twelve-year-olds.

Hailed as a “scientific breakthrough.”

The boom is fueled by media outlets that uncritically promote weight-loss injections as “miracle cures.” In 2023, the renowned Science magazine named GLP-1 weight-loss aids the “scientific breakthrough of the year.” (2) Advertising agencies have celebrities rave about them (3) – from Oprah Winfrey to former tennis star Billie Jean King and rapper Queen Latifah. Mercenary influencers are making a fortune with shrill praise on Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms.

Originally developed for type 2 diabetics, new applications for Ozempic and its ilk are emerging almost weekly: from alcoholism, nicotine addiction, and opioid dependence to psychosis, leukemia, strokes, heart attacks, aging, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease—a pharmacological all-rounder, it seems.

Journalists are sweeping under the rug side effects that are by no means limited to constant nausea, severe vomiting, heartburn, abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea, and sleep disturbances. Alarming reports of fainting spells, significant muscle atrophy, gastroparesis (food remains in the stomach), intestinal obstruction, arthritis-like inflamed joints, low blood pressure, allergic reactions, pancreatitis, gastric paralysis, kidney and gallbladder disease, thyroid cancer, and sudden vision loss are piling up. (4) Symptoms often persist after discontinuation. Apparently, the substance can also trigger suicidal thoughts, which are sometimes followed by actions. The drugs are so dangerous for pregnant women that US doctors are advocating for them to be labeled with a black box warning: the strictest, black-bordered warning the FDA can issue for medications when serious, even life-threatening consequences are imminent. A study published in January 2025 in Nature Medicine involving 215,970 diabetics taking GLP-1 medications found no fewer than 19 concerning side effects.

High risk for questionable benefits

The GLP-1 active ingredients actually slim down far more reliably than PDE-5 inhibitors, such as those in Viagra, which harden certain cavernous bodies. They achieve this by mimicking the body’s own hormone GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1). In the brain, they trigger the satiety center in the hypothalamus to suppress hunger. They also slow gastric emptying, which makes you feel full sooner and for longer. They cause the pancreas to produce more insulin while simultaneously inhibiting glucagon secretion, which improves blood sugar control. All of this generally leads to patients consuming significantly fewer calories – and consequently losing weight. Depending on the active ingredient and duration of use, the average weight loss is between 15 and 24%.

That’s enormous.

But: Those pesky pounds generally only melt away as long as the injections continue. As soon as you stop taking Wegovy and the like, a rebound effect occurs, which almost reliably ruins even conventional diets: The pounds quickly return (5), as patient reports and studies confirm. Therefore, “experts” who tend to conceal their conflicts of interest – the industry’s notorious “hired mouths” – advocate persistent long-term use: As a chronic disease, obesity must be treated permanently, until the end of life. This is how the pharmaceutical industry loves its customers: they want them to take the medication as early as possible, for as long as possible, and as often as possible.

Anyone who goes along with this is shamelessly asked to pay: In the USA, GLP-1 drugs cost an average of €11,000 to €17,500 per patient per year. Ozempic costs about €915 per month, compared to €135 in Canada, €113 in Germany, €85 in the UK, and €76 in France. Wegovy is listed in the US for around €1,200 per month, compared to around €300 in Germany, €170 in Denmark, and €84 in the UK. This is a self-funded cost. Because the drugs are considered lifestyle medications, health insurance companies don’t cover them – not yet. Politicians with industry ties and an army of lobbyists are working diligently to change this rule.

Fat pharma junkies secure fat profits.

As long as humanity continues to gain weight, demand is likely to continue rising. A projected 3.8 billion adults and 746 million children and adolescents could be overweight or obese by the middle of this century “without appropriate policy measures, reforms, and new therapies.” Australian researchers derive this forecast from trends in available health data. In Germany, 20 to 23 percent of young people could be affected. The results point to “monumental societal failures and a lack of coordinated global action,” explains study leader Jessica Kerr of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne. Disastrous consequences for public health threaten, given the bright marketing prospects for weight-loss injections and pills – unless overweight people turn to the more arduous but healthier and cheaper way to lose weight: simply consume fewer calories than they burn. Overweight people don’t need to follow a prescription for this; they simply need to heed the good advice: exercise more and eat better.

“We’re eating ourselves to death”

Because Homo sapiens generally tend to take the supposedly easiest path, US physician Dr. Casey Means, at least, has a bleak outlook. GLP-1 “could become the most profitable drug in the history of humanity,” she recently predicted in a television interview on the Tucker Carlson Show. Like her brother Calley, a former lobbyist for Big Pharma and Big Food, she quit her job when she “realized with horror how many people are killed by the system they are part of.” In her opinion, “the idea that there is a magic pill—that salvation from our chronic health problems can be found in a shot—is becoming more and more entrenched. (…) We are the only species in the world experiencing an epidemic of obesity and chronic disease, primarily due to ultra-processed foods.” All other animals in the wild feed on real, natural food (…) and are able to regulate their satiety. They don’t eat themselves to death like we do.”

(Harald Wiesendanger)

Hailed as a “scientific breakthrough.”

High risk for questionable benefits

Fat pharma junkies secure fat profits.

“We’re eating ourselves to death”

Published by Editor