April Fool’s comes early.
In news that at first blush defies all rationality, the manufacturer of Mounjaro, Eli Lilly, is now attacking celebrities using it for “vanity” purposes and discouraging them from promoting it, even while its rivals recruit celebrities to hock these drugs.
Via CNN (emphasis added):
Celebrities’ use of a type 2 diabetes drug to lose weight had sparked both backlash and fascination by the time of last year’s Oscars. As this year’s ceremony approaches on Sunday night, the maker of a competitor set of medicines in Ozempic’s class has a message for people trying to use the drugs to slim down quickly for cosmetic reasons: These aren’t for you.
“Some people have been using medicine never meant for them,” begins one ad from drugmaker Eli Lilly, called “Big Night,” which will debut on TV this weekend. “For the smaller dress or tux, for a big night, for vanity.”
A red carpet is rolled out; paparazzi cameras flash.
“But that’s not the point,” the voiceover continues as the images transition from a glitzy event to a woman dressed in ordinary clothes riding public transit. “People whose health is affected by obesity are the reason we work on these medications. It matters who gets them.”…
“We have a point of view about how these drugs are being used,” CEO David Ricks told CNN. “These medicines were invented for people with a serious health condition; they were not invented just to have someone who’s famous look a little bit better.”
Then there’s the Equity™ issue; anytime accusations of racism are injected into the equation, the diverse PR departments at corporations like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk recoil in reflexive terror, immediately scrambling to mitigate what is perceived as the existential reputational damage incurred.
Note that in the ad the “victim” of the celebrities’ “vanity” use of weight loss drugs is an ethnically diverse woman on a subway.
Via NBC News:
About half of the adults in the United States have obesity or are severely obese, a crisis that means more people are at risk of heart disease, diabetes or some types of cancer.
According to new data, there are stark geographic and racial disparities in who is able to get their hands on semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy.
The real question that emerges, from my perspective, is: why are the corporate state media and Public Health™ establishment so dead-set on getting these injections into as many minorities’ arms as possible, even when they can’t afford them?
Related: Corporate Media, Pharmaceutical Industry Demand Medicare Subsidize Ozempic
It’s certainly not out of any kind of concern regarding their welfare; COVID-19, for any rational person, dispensed with the fantasy that these organizations promote public health.
So what is the motivation at play? Is it merely corporate capture of regulatory agencies and the advertising incentives in corporate state media, or is there more going on here?
