For almost every week in the last few months, newspapers have been publishing articles about the use of ‘magic injections that guarantee weight loss’. This ‘magic injection’ contains a drug called Semaglutide. Originally used for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, this drug also results in weight loss. However, many of the articles promoting these drugs fail to mention that this weight loss drug has not been approved for sale in India but is being administered by doctors to patients who are mostly affluent.
The press releases by global pharma companies advising patients not to use this product in India do not get any publicity in the media. The media is also guilty of not reporting the significant side-effects that these drugs can cause. For some of us who lived to tell the tale, this is eerily similar to Rimonabant and Fen–Phen.
Many decades ago, in the United States, another type of weight loss drug was marketed as a miracle weight loss cure. Soon, the miracle was demystified and pharma companies paid out approximately $4 billion in damages in mass tort litigation. Weight loss drugs, however, form only a small fraction of such unauthorised drugs.
