Ozempic’s Inventor is Race-Grifting to Hook Millions on Taxpayer-Funded ‘Anti-Obesity’ Drugs.

Novo Nordisk – the manufacturer of the “miracle” weight-loss drug Wegovy (also known as Ozempic) – is using racial factors to insist on government funding for their drug in the United States. The company is using a network of paid medical affiliates to push pharmaceutical treatment of obesity, including Dr Fatima Cody Stanford, who recently appeared on 60 Minutes to promote the idea that weight loss is unachievable in the traditional manner. The company also appears to be funding pro-Wegovy research articles that contain a racial bent.

Novo is following a similar strategy in other countries, including the United Kingdom, where an Observer investigation revealed the company to be bankrolling National Health Service (NHS) weight-loss services in an effort to boost sales of their drugs. Novo made payments of £21.7 million to UK health organisations and professionals in a period of just three years before the approval of Wegovy under Britain’s socialized healthcare system.

Medical professionals closely affiliated to the company have also made media appearances, including on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 Today show, to argue that appetite-suppressing drugs like Wegovy are “one of the most powerful pharmaceutical tools” we have to treat obesity.

Although semaglutide – the pharmaceutical name for the drug – was originally designed as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes, for which it is marketed as Ozempic, buzz about its weight-loss effects have quickly grown. The drug is injected and works by mimicking a natural gut hormone called GLP-1, which regulates insulin and blood sugar levels. You feel fuller for longer, curbing hunger pangs. If you stop feeling hungry, you stop eating, and if you stop eating, you start losing weight.

By 2020, Wegovy had already been prescribed four million times in the US alone, making it the nation’s 129th most commonly prescribed medication. After a shortage of Wegovy in the United States, doctors began prescribing Ozempic, which contains a lower dose of semaglutide, off-label, as a fat-loss treatment. Similar shortages have also been reported elsewhere, including in Australia. In the first nine months of 2022, Novo Nordisk reported a 59 percent growth in sales of its semaglutide drugs. Social media sites, especially TikTok and Instagram, are now awash with videos about semaglutide and its miraculous effects. The hashtag “#ozempic” has hundreds of millions of views on TikTok alone.

PHARMA INFLUENCERS.

The drug’s growing popularity has been massively bolstered by high-profile admissions of its use, including by Elon Musk, who recently debuted a much trimmer-looking physique, and by speculation about which other celebrities have used it. Kim Kardashian is rumored to have used Wegovy to lose enough weight to almost fit into one of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dresses.

The news that Novo Nordisk is using every available means to boost sales of Wegovy will be no surprise to anybody who knows anything about how the pharmaceutical industry works. The fact the company is so brazenly “playing the race card” may still come as something of a shock. Pharmaceutical companies are moving with the times, and that includes adapting to the increasingly Critical Race Theory-heavy realm of public discourse, and making ever-greater use of social media to recruit customers.

The National Pulse recently reported on the shady networks of “patient-influencers” used by companies like Novo Nordisk to sell drugs without the mediation of a physician. These patient-influencers dispense health advice on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, including recommendations for medication for conditions they claim to suffer from. Many of these individuals are affiliated with drug companies and receive payment for their services.

“The bottom line here is that patient influencers act as a form of interactive direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, sharing their knowledge and experiences on pharmaceutical drugs with communities of followers in which they wield great influence,” said Erin Willis, author of a new study on patient-influencers.

“This raises ethical questions that need more investigation.”

DTC advertising allows drug manufacturers to target consumers directly, rather than through physicians. This method of advertising emerged in the 1980s, and is only prevalent in the US and New Zealand. In these countries, about half of all people who ask their doctor about a new drug do so after seeing a television commercial for it.

OBESITY AND RACE.

Obesity is one of the main besetting illnesses of modern life in the developed world. A recent study in the Journal of Obesity focused on the long-term weight gain of nearly 15,000 adults in the US, finding that one-fifth of US adults gained 20 percent of their body weight over 10 years.

According to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41.9 percent of adults are now obese, a significant increase from the 30.5 percent who were obese at the turn of the millennium. The prevalence of severe adult obesity has increased to 9.2 percent from 4.7 percent. Nearly 15 million, or 19.7 percent of US children are now obese, and 12.7 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds, 20.7 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds, and 22.2 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds are now obese. The estimated medical cost of obesity in the United States was nearly $173 billion in 2019.

With such an enormous potential market, it is no wonder that Novo Nordisk is pulling out all the stops to corner as much of the market as possible for its weight-loss drug Wegovy. In particular, Novo wants the U.S. Congress to add coverage of obesity drugs and “weight-related behavioural therapy” to Medicare, and is pushing on a variety of different fronts to get this to happen. Novo is the largest industry donor to the Obesity Action Coalition, which is responsible for a variety of advocacy campaigns and works regularly with groups like the National Urban League and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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