The obesity jab may save the food industry’s bacon, but should it?

‘Weight-loss wonder drug’ Semaglutide under the trade name Ozempic. Photograph: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

Suppose there were such a thing as an “experience machine”, a contraption you could plug yourself into and live any life you wanted? Would you plug in? Or imagine we invented a type of zombie, a monster that looks, behaves and responds exactly like us but has no inner experiences? Would this creature have consciousness?

Or how about this. Suppose there were a magical injection that fat people could take to become thin, no effort required. Should we make it widely available?