The problematic emergence of anti-obesity drugs
Living life with a fat body means you’re less likely to be hired and will be paid less than not fat people. The consequences of weight discrimination, which can include poor medical treatment, loneliness, psychological distress, and increased stress, can actually be interrupt fat people’s lives.
The decision to take drugs becomes “the devil’s choice,” says Osborne. “To claim that I have the right to be who I am now, or to exchange this right for significantly greater rights and privileges in the culture.” Instead, the fat acceptance movement insists that fat people be given the same rights as everyone else, regardless of size.
Novo Nordisk campaign It’s Bigger Than Me, featuring actress Queen Latifah as her face, drew particular criticism. With it, the company is trying to join the message of fat acceptance by removing stigma and prejudice about weight and debunking the misconception that obesity is simply a lack of intentional control, while at the same time selling a drug that aims to reduce weight. makes fat people smaller. “Saying that if you get rid of fat, you give them a chance to thrive, not … you just make a person smaller and sell him a little as a way out of oppression,” says Marquise Mercedes, a public health doctoral student at Brown University.
However, these fears are countered by an obvious truth: anti-obesity drugs are effective in treating this complex condition. While the underpinnings of obesity remain elusive, researchers have come to conflicting consensus about one hard fact: Obesity is not a physical manifestation of a lack of willpower. Studies have repeatedly shown that diets do not help to lose weight and keep it off. Obesity is a complex, confusing mixture of biological and environmental factors that scientists have yet to fully resolve and cannot be reduced to the simple question of calories consumed and expended. “This concept is wrong,” says Francesco Rubino, professor of metabolic surgery at King’s College London. “It’s not true that obesity is the result of too much energy.”
Having working drugs that can intervene where other interventions have failed will bring important health benefits to some. Obesity raises the risk of a number of debilitating and fatal conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer. According to Rubino, these drugs may even help unravel the mystery behind the underlying causes of weight gain. In addition to reducing the desire to eat, people taking semaglutide appear to have a reduced impulse to engage in dopamine fueled activities such as drinking alcohol or shopping. according to David McLean, a physician who has treated many patients with this remedy.
But these therapies are not meant for the masses. They are indicated for a specific group of patients: people with a body mass index of 30 kg/m², clinically defined obesity, or people with a BMI of 27 kg/m² or higher (and therefore classified as overweight). if they have another weight-related condition that threatens their health, such as high blood pressure. (It is worth mentioning that BMI, the diagnostic tool most commonly used around the world to determine obesity, has proven to be flawed and discriminatory health score.)