Comment by chis
4 hours ago
At this point it might legit be impossible for a side effect to be discovered that outweighs the immense health benefits of losing weight.
It feels like people want there to be some horrible side effect to these drugs. Idk if it’s some moral objection to weight loss without discipline, or just general mistrust of big pharma.
It's absolutely the moral thing. Even on HN there are an endless number of people who treat the use of GLP-1s as a failure that must be publicly shamed.
I suspect a big part of that stems from the fact that many people treat being overweight as a moral failure in and of itself, and rather than repenting and doing the morally right and correct thing to lose the weight on your own, using a GLP-1 is "cheating".
Of course, all that ignores that people's bodies are different, and some people will be slim no matter what they do, while others are doomed to be heavier regardless what they do on their own (barring extremes like developing eating disorders), but I'm not sure it would matter even should everyone understand that -- a large proportion of people need someone they perceive as lesser whom they can look down upon, and physical appearance is a quick and easy means to categorize others.
That's because people are recommending them for long term use, and treating them like some miracle cure, when the only affect is appetite suppression. If you are malnourished for years, you're just going to die. These things are useful for a few months if you really, really have no willpower and don't want to develop any. For anyone else (most people), it's much healthier to learn how to do difficult things.
Yes, there absolutely is a sense of "it was hard for me, but I did it anyway, you should do the hard thing too". But that's not out of nowhere. Willpower is a muscle. If someone never exercises it, it's going to atrophy. It doesn't need to be shameful, but people who promote these things need to seriously consider the reality that most people's hunger is caused by something real, and just not being hungry does not solve any of those underlying problems.
My mother is a little bit overweight, which is a problem of calories OUT being too low. She doesn't exercise enough. She doesn't have energy to exercise. That's a problem of calories IN being too low. She's taking a GLP-1 now to lose weight. It very exactly does not solve either of those issues. She has less energy. Most of the weight being lost is muscle mass. I think it's despicable that these things were rushed through the medical system. I don't think it's the layman's fault for being manipulated into thinking it's medicine.
Recently I've talked to someone who said she is worried about those drugs as they will create 2 tier society because only people with money will get thin. This also increases already bad fat phobia in our society according to her.
She has a PhD in biotechnology and works in a lab. She is also quite thin (always was).
It's crab mentality disguised as moral position. It's especially obvious when the same people advocate for free access to drugs, alcohol or gambling. You should have freedom you do anything as long as it doesn't improve your life or move you to in social hierarchy.
Generics sell in India for $15/mo so it’s not gonna be too bad, long term.
Who are these mythical people that are
- Concerned about fatphobia
- Worried Ozempic might create a two tier society
- Believe we should have unrestricted access to gambling and drugs
This sounds like a goomba to me.
I would give you the name but that wouldn't be ok. Other than that what else can I do? I've spent time writing about an encounter I can with someone I know for 20 years and you just called me a lier because the story sounds improbable to you.
Isn't the whole point to read about what others think or experienced to learn about things you personally hasn't?
> It feels like people want there to be some horrible side effect to these drugs.
Being able to lose weight is, in many minds, associated with self-discipline. A route to the same goal that elides self-discipline is consequently viewed as a cheat, a shortcut.
It's a product if the cultural pervasiveness of the Protestant work ethic and its relation to the health and wellness domains. That fine, in my opinion, if one is Protestant, but why carry the baggage for someone else's religion if you're not one, ya know?
Culture and religion are intertwined even if separate. Western civilization is "culturally Christian" even in secular countries like France. Many places in the US are thus "culturally Protestant" even if most of their current-day population don't follow that religion.
I'm a doxastic voluntarist, as in, we think ourselves to be less able to change our beliefs than we actually are. The idea that weight loss by means other than self-discipline seems, at least to me, quite easy to choose to not believe in.