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Comment by can16358p

4 days ago

Probably nothing initially.

Then over years of us and accumulated data, people will realize that they can't game a complex system that the body needs like sleep with a simple drug, and those "healthy" wakefulness drugs will either be banned or face lots of controversy.

That's almost exactly what people said about the appetite -- about the biochemical pathways which govern hunger, which are known to be massively redundant and overlapping.

But then Ozempic was released and it turned out there was a shortcut after all.

Which is not to say that such things are necessarily "healthy" or desirable, just that you can't rule out that biochemically-modifiable characteristics, however complex, have "one simple trick!" you can use to attain a desired end.

  • That's a pretty poor comparison. A drug that makes you not need sleep is more like a drug that prevents you from starving to death without eating.

    • I mean that would be TPN, where people can be kept alive indefinitely through intravenous fluids (and nutrients).

  • And exactly as I said, Ozempic does more harm in the long run.

    • There are mountains of data that show it actually has long term benefits beyond weight loss (beyond even the obvious health markers that improve due to losing weight). I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the majority of the population ends up taking next gen drugs in this space, most of them purely for longevity.

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    • Proof? Doesn't need to be specific -- a general study showing higher all-cause mortality in Ozempic users compared to a control group over a long period would be just fine.