If you follow the media purveyors of American celebrity culture, you have probably heard of a new drug that’s all the rage with the cultural elite called semaglutide, better known under its U.S. brand names Wegovy and Ozempic.
As I have covered elsewhere for PJ Media, the corporate state media has been busy diligently promoting this drug — which actually isn’t new and has been in use for years as an anti-diabetic therapeutic — as a breakthrough, “miracle” weight loss solution alternative to passé things like eating right or exercising. The promise of losing weight relatively quickly without having to sacrifice anything, as the pharmaceutical industry’s marketers know so well, is too enticing to pass up for the Western “give me a solution right now” microwave, drive-through culture.
As I have also reported via PJ Media, the purveyors of semaglutide have quietly deployed paid Public Health™ “experts” to sing the praises of the drug across corporate state media without disclosing their conflicts of interest. Victoria Taft, similarly, reported recently that the American Academy of Pediatrics is now recommending semaglutide to obese children.
In other words, the government and private sector stars all aligned to crown semaglutide the next big invention of the industry, among the likes of antibiotics or insulin.
In a recently released study, up to 50% of patients prescribed semaglutide experienced gastrointestinal symptoms. Via Expert Opinion on Drug Safety:
[In patients taking semaglutide] it is possible to observe a high prevalence of gastrointestinal disorders (N = 3502, 53.2%). The most severe reported cases were primarily gastrointestinal disorders, metabolic, and nutritional disorders, eye disorders, renal and urinary disorders and cardiac disorders, with an evident higher prevalence of adverse gastrointestinal events both in oral and injectable dosage form (N = 133, 50.0% vs N = 588, 47.2%, respectively).
The class of drugs to which semaglutide belongs — glucagon-like peptide 1 analogs — have been often implicated in kidney damage.
Related: ‘Miracle Drug’: CNBC Advertises for Pharma, Disguises It as News
Case reports of acute kidney injury in patients taking the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists exenatide and liraglutide have been reported. We report 2 patients with chronic kidney disease due to diabetic kidney disease who experienced rapid worsening of kidney function and increased proteinuria after being prescribed the GLP-1 receptor agonist semaglutide.
Furthermore — as was the case with the novel mRNA COVID-19 “vaccines,” if you’re looking for common threads — there is very limited research into the long-term negative health impacts, if any, of semaglutide use.
What there is evidence of is the fact that many semaglutide users, after having spent a small fortune on the drug, experience “rebound” weight gain.
Via Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism:
One year after withdrawal of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2.4 mg and lifestyle intervention, participants regained two-thirds of their prior weight loss, with similar changes in cardiometabolic variables. Findings confirm the chronicity of obesity and suggest ongoing treatment is required to maintain improvements in weight and health.
There is not now, and perhaps never will be, an end-run around healthy eating and regular physical exertion as a means for losing weight and getting healthy. With very few exceptions, tinkering with hormone levels as a long-term solution to anything is a fool’s errand if you understand the complex interplay of hormones within the body. Look no further than roided-out bodybuilders to understand the danger of artificially manipulating hormone levels. Unfortunately, while it may not be effective in most cases and may actually cause more problems than it fixes, hormone manipulation is highly lucrative for the biomedical industry.
