0:00

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman from Science Versus.

0:02

Today, we've got something a little different

0:04

for you. We are sharing an episode

0:06

from the journal about the rise of

0:09

Ozempic and other blockbuster drugs that are

0:11

being used for weight loss. And

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this episode is part of a series that

0:16

the journal is doing called Trillion Dollar Shot.

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Now, if you listen to Science Versus a lot,

0:21

thank you, but you'll know that

0:23

we've covered these kinds of drugs a bit

0:25

and we've talked about how they work and

0:27

what their potential side effects are. But

0:30

in this episode today, you're going to

0:32

hear the details of how these

0:34

medications first got made and

0:36

how for a moment there, it looked

0:38

like Big Pharma was going to stop

0:40

their development. Trillion Dollar Shot

0:42

is coming up just after the break. This

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2:01

admit to a slight bit of syringe anxiety. I'm

2:13

not happy to admit that, but that

2:15

is something that I've dealt with. Back

2:18

in January, I hopped on a video

2:20

call with my colleague Bradley Olson, who's

2:23

out in San Francisco. Brad

2:25

was about to give himself a dose of a

2:27

drug he'd been taking for weight loss. It

2:30

was an unusual and personal moment for a

2:32

coworker to share. Brad

2:46

has struggled with his weight for more than 20 years. And

2:49

he said this medication made it easier than

2:51

it had ever been for him to lose

2:53

weight. In five months, Brad

2:56

had lost about 40 pounds. You

2:58

know, the thing that was in the beginning

3:00

like a revelation, I know

3:03

that sounds crazy, but like without

3:06

medicine, when

3:08

I would eat well, when

3:11

I would kind of follow a good

3:13

course, I would

3:15

just feel very hungry. And

3:18

it wouldn't be a good hungry. It

3:21

would just be annoying, annoying

3:24

and disruptive and

3:27

frustrating. When

3:30

you're on the medicine, it was just great. Those

3:34

voices, which I came to really hate,

3:36

were just silent. This

3:42

medicine is part of a new class

3:44

of pharmaceuticals that has exploded in popularity

3:46

over the last few years. The

3:49

most well known is Ozempic. Brad

3:52

was taking one called Mount Jaro. Anyway,

3:55

so I'm going to take my syringe

3:57

out of the box. It's five milligrams.

8:00

Why did you want to lose weight? I'm

8:10

trying to be as honest as I can,

8:12

as I think about

8:14

it. It's a hard

8:16

question. Yeah. And

8:20

I wanted to

8:22

look better, you know? I know that

8:26

some people will

8:28

say it was for my kids, and it

8:30

was, I wish that I had some noble reason. I'm

8:35

just being honest, you know? Mm-hmm.

8:38

The noble reason is like, I've got kids, and

8:41

I want to run with them. And I would think

8:43

about that, but I would run with them. Mm-hmm. And

8:46

I would think about other things. But in the end, I

8:48

felt like I was going to lose weight. I'm

8:55

not supposed to be like

8:57

this. Hmm. You

8:59

know? This isn't me. Brad's

9:04

story is familiar to millions

9:06

of Americans. For decades,

9:08

obesity has been on the rise. The

9:11

CDC says one in three adults in

9:13

the U.S. is obese. The

9:16

condition is linked to shorter life

9:18

expectancy, to diabetes, heart disease, and

9:20

to some cancers, not

9:22

to mention larger health care bills. And

9:25

billions have been poured into addressing the issue. But

9:28

nothing's been able to bring the numbers down. What

9:31

most doctors recommend, diet and

9:33

exercise, they don't work long-term

9:36

for most people. And

9:38

short of surgery, the great minds of

9:40

industry, technology, and medicine just haven't

9:42

been able to find an effective treatment

9:45

until this new class of drugs. Every

9:48

doctor interaction that you have when

9:50

it's about weight loss is always,

9:52

the doctor's like, I'm

9:56

telling you things that you're not going to do.

9:58

Hmm. They don't say that. But it's

10:00

just the subtext is basically like this

10:02

conversation of I'm telling you things

10:04

to do and I don't think you're gonna do

10:06

them. It was like we

10:08

were performing in a play. He

10:11

was pretending to be a doctor that believed he

10:13

was giving good advice and I was pretending to

10:15

be a patient that was listening and

10:18

was really gonna make a change. Neither

10:20

was true. And the difference

10:23

with this conversation was like, this is

10:25

gonna work. Like there

10:27

was no doubt about whether or not it was

10:29

gonna work. And that was such a difference. And

10:33

how did it go? Like how

10:35

quickly did you start to lose weight and

10:37

what were your reactions? I

10:40

was just shocked. I

10:42

had heard people talk

10:44

about being on the medicine

10:47

and how it really zapped their cravings.

10:50

You know, I had read that. But

10:52

to experience it is another thing entirely.

10:56

Brad's going to share more of his own

10:58

story throughout this series. But

11:00

first, we wanna go back to where

11:02

it all started. Ozempic

11:04

was developed by a Danish pharmaceutical

11:06

company called Novo Nordisk. The

11:10

story starts in the 1990s with

11:12

a woman named Lada Bier Knudsen. I

11:14

did a lot of work in the

11:16

laboratory. I was the

11:19

lab rat. Lada

11:22

was a young scientist at Novo Nordisk. When

11:25

she was just starting her career, she

11:27

was focused on what most scientists at Novo were

11:29

there to do, develop drugs

11:31

for treating diabetes. I always

11:34

wanted to work for this company. And

11:36

I was very set on

11:38

wanting to make product-related research.

11:40

I never wanted to be

11:42

an academic researcher. I

11:45

just knew that I wanted

11:47

to make products that could somehow be

11:49

useful for human beings. And

11:52

Lada had a bit of a reputation. I

11:55

won't say that I have a temper. Maybe some

11:57

people would say that about me. But I'm very...

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Wireless. As

30:01

you know, today, a lot

30:04

of people don't necessarily associate ozmpic

30:06

with diabetes. They associate it

30:08

with obesity treatment and weight loss.

30:11

How did that happen? And when

30:13

did people at Novo start realizing that

30:16

it was being prescribed off-label for weight

30:18

loss? Yeah, I'm

30:20

glad you asked that question. I'll

30:22

start with the first part. It's

30:24

really important, and I'd

30:27

love to stress to your listeners, that ozmpic

30:30

is for type 2 diabetes. And

30:32

I would ask

30:34

everyone to really

30:37

think about the uses of

30:39

these medicines based on what they're

30:41

intended for. The

30:43

second part to your question, we

30:45

knew that there was

30:48

a need for a new

30:50

medicine for people living with obesity. And

30:53

we were studying higher

30:56

doses of semaglutide for

30:58

chronic weight management. And

31:00

that was in clinical

31:02

trials while ozmpic, of course, was

31:05

being launched into the market as

31:07

a type 2 diabetes medication.

31:09

I totally understand what you're saying. However,

31:13

it did happen that doctors prescribed

31:15

ozmpic off-label. They were

31:17

making jokes about it at the Oscars. What

31:19

do you do in a moment like that? Yeah,

31:23

I think what we have to

31:25

do is

31:28

play our role and do

31:31

our part to ensure that

31:33

we try to correct any

31:35

time that happens. We,

31:39

of course, are

31:41

not denying

31:43

that those things happen. We're

31:45

not being shy. We see

31:47

the media. And

31:54

ultimately, clinicians make

31:56

the choice. And

31:58

our position is...