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Comment by richbell | Hacker News Reader

> these drugs have been in the market for 15 years, they’re not exactly untested.

Ozempic was approved by the FDA in 2017, and in the past few years has taken off as a miracle weight-loss drug, which isn't its original purpose.

People using a newer drug for a newer purpose and experiencing complications is not click bait.

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“These drugs” referred to the class of drugs, GLP1s, which have been around for much longer. Victoza was approved in 2010 (liraglutide) and Byetta in 2005. It’s clickbait because it’s trying desperately to paint a narrative that these drugs were rushed to market and that they’re unsafe.

The narrative plays well to the general public because it’s a weight loss drug, which is seen as vain/ non-virtuous (even though it is, indeed, healthier to live life at a more modest BMI than most the population currently has).

If this were not clickbait they would be focused on breaking a new story, but there’s no story to be had, just “out of the millions of people who have taken this drug, we were able to find 2 that are less than shining examples of wellness”.

Weight loss drugs aren't just seen as vain, they're seen as potentially very dangerous due to the effects of the mitochondrial uncoupler and "miracle" weight-loss drug DNP. Journalists are on a hair trigger for hidden flaws, now.

Amen

We spend so much time and energy worrying about terrorists, fascists, guns, etc when it's heart disease, fentanyl, car crashes, and cancer doing all the killing

Guns do enough killing to be compared to car crashes: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-...

Car crashes: https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...

UK for comparison: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

To be fair though, the root cause is probably a mental health crisis, especially seeing that suicides outnumber the homicides. But it goes without question that projectile weapons make it tremendously easier for mentally ill or desperate people to kill themselves or other people.

21k gun homicides, 43k car deaths, according to your links. And I'm guessing there are orders of magnitude more life-destroying non-fatal car events than gun events.

Also, maybe this is what I get downvoted to hell for, but I'd prefer we focus on making peoples' lives better so that they want to live; banning their access to quick & painless deaths (of which guns are the ~last; most good suicide drugs have already been throttled, helium is now cut with oxygen, and hanging has only a ~70% success rate) seems like focusing on the wrong side of the equation. I want people to want to live, not be forced to continue existing because of the extreme pain of the dying process.

It's just bizarre to me that car accidents and heart attacks aren't on anyone's radar at all

You turn on the news, and it'll go on and on and on and on and on about which bathroom people can or can't use, but there's nothing about heart health. If anything it's the opposite, just crazy bullshit about marauding criminal immigrants/pending climate catastrophe that stresses people out interspersed with closeups of greasy salty cheeseburgers

This specific drug was actually lauded on here a few months ago by a happy user who said it helped him with other cravings unrelated to food

I’ve taken one of the drugs in that class and it works great. I think people get hung up on the fact that you can buy thinness now, and that rubs people the wrong way because it’s always been the one thing you can’t buy, that it must come from discipline alone, but now you can and nothing is sacred anymore.

I wonder if there were some vice that degraded eyesight, that LASIK would be frowned upon.

We always get these drugs but in the long run show horrible side effects, I guess this article and some people are just trying to claim for their own reasons this cycle will continue, despite no good evidence for it.

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