A media frenzy around Ozempic, the obesity drug manufactured by Novo Nordisk, has resulted in MSM parading around “experts” and activists, shilling for the product as a panacea for obesity without disclosing their financial ties to the drug maker.
Both the left leaning Washington Post and the right leaning Washington Examiner featured articles that quoted health “expert” Dr. Angela Fitch, head of the Obesity Medicine Association, calling for insurance plans to cover Ozempic. Neither outlet disclosed that Dr. Fitch was a paid consultant for Novo Nordisk and her association is underwritten by them. She also formerly served on their advisory board.
ABC News featured an article on the high cost of Ozempic, which currently costs $1350 per month in the US, and quoted Dr. Deborah Horn who advocates for extending Medicare coverage to the prescription drug. ABC failed to disclose that Novo Nordisk has paid Dr. Horn $250K in consulting fees, services and travel expenses over the past three years. The same article cited a study conducted by the Urban League on coverage issues for the new drug but failed to disclose that the study was paid for by Novo Nordisk.
USA Today featured an article on obesity that quoted Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford on “weight stigma” preventing obese patients from receiving available medications for obesity and identified her only as an obesity specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. CNBC quoted the same “expert” about “weight stigma” preventing obese people from receiving their new medication. CNBC also disclosed that she was affiliated with Harvard. Neither outlet divulged that Dr. Cody is a paid consultant for Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly who produces Wegovy, a similar obesity medication.
All of the financial conflicts of interests of Corporate Media anointed public health experts and perhaps your own PCP can be queried on this government site: openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.
NBC news ran a story touting Ozempic and Wegovy as break through drugs that will finally treat obesity if only there wasn’t that pesky “weight stigma.” On this topic NBC quoted Rebecca Puhl and cited her affiliations with the University of Connecticut's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health and the Obesity Action Coalition. However, the outlet did not divulge that Rebecca Puhl is a paid consultant for Novo Nordisk and that her astroturfed activist group had received over $100K from Eli Lilly and over half a million from Novo Nordisk. This information is easily accessible on their Corporate Partners page.
BET magazine featured an article about Queen Latifah’s campaign to promote the new obesity drugs to resolve racial disparities in rates of obesity and diabetes (which are highest among blacks) but failed to disclose that she is a paid shill for Novo Nordisk.
A local news outlet in Jackson, MS covered a town hall convened by the National Consumer League on the obesity epidemic in the black community and the need for an “Obesity bill of rights”, entailed in a draft bill called the ‘Treat & Reduce Obesity Act’, that includes medicare and medicaid coverage for drugs like Ozempic. While the National Consumer League is not explicitly funded by Novo Nordisk or Eli Lilly pharma lobbyist Andrea LaRue is on their board of directors.
The 120-week RCT for Ozempic showed that while weight loss was substantial in the treatment group, dropping 17% from baseline after 68 weeks of treatment compared to only 2% for the control group, they quickly rebounded a year after they discontinued treatment rising from having lost 17% of their baseline weight in week 68 to having lost only 5.6% of their baseline weight by week 120. This is equivalent to a 200 lb woman dropping to 166 lb before regaining most of it and rising to 189 lb. Who knows if the treatment group would have returned to their baseline weight if they were observed for equal amount of time after discontinuing the medication. Such results suggest that Ozempic might be a lifetime prescription and with 44% of Americans now obese, and still growing, there is a very large market for it.
The Root Causes of Obesity
As I noted four years ago in How Congress Created Our Obesity Epidemic, the obesity epidemic plaguing the US is neither one of simple personal moral failure nor of not having a quick fix drug like Ozempic. The very core of our food system, the annual farm bill, has been used to subsidize a handful of commodity crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat and sorghum that are turned into ultra processed foods containing refined sugars and trans fats and provides more carbs than what most of the work force actually need to get through their day. The same farm bill that subsidizes the commodity crops that are turned into ultra processed foods also provides “nutritional assistance” in the form of food stamps or in modern times preloaded EBT cards to millions of low income Americans. The glut of cheap commodity crops that are turned into ultra processed foods came about as a result of a 1974 USDA policy change intended to encourage overproduction of these crops to dominate global markets.
Poverty and Obesity
Currently, the average monthly SNAP allowance, across the country, is about $182 per person and $343 per household or $6 per day per person and just over $11 per day per household. When faced with such severe financial constraints recipients would be incented to buy the cheaper ultra processed foods that maximize caloric intake than the whole foods that would be more expensive for the same caloric demand. It shouldn’t be surprising why poverty in the US is highly correlated with obesity and blacks, who are overrepresented as SNAP recipients, have a much higher obesity rate than any other demographic. Of course, the problem isn’t limited to SNAP recipients because these ultra processed foods are so ubiquitous that they are unavoidable unless someone is extremely conscientious about their diet.
As I’ve elaborated in (Part 1) and (Part 4) both the food and drug industry have made a concerted effort to buy scientists and physicians and orchestrate astroturfed campaigns masquerading as grassroots public health activism to steer public discourse away from the structural problems in our food supply and healthcare system that proliferate chronic diseases to quick fix treatments in injectable and pill forms because unlike Ozempic fixing the national food supply does not show up on quarterly earnings reports, doesn’t return higher profits to shareholders and can’t be patented and sold at a 1,000% mark up.