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Comment by quotemstr | Hacker News Reader

> This is a diabetes drug. There has to be a biochemical catch here.

What if there isn't a catch? Sometimes technology really does just improve the human condition with no serious downsides. Consider refrigeration or sanitary surgical techniques.

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The human body is a massive system of interconnected feedback loops. Tweak one knob, and there are always cascading side effects.

I could entirely see this being a net positive for a lot of people, but I want to know what those side effects are.

Plenty of people have got digestive system paralysis, so that’s a downside. Obviously the big issue is that for people with diabetes this has made the drug unavailable for actual medical problems that don’t have other treatments.

Long term studies are also not super complete - even something known to cause cancer like smoking or asbestos takes decades to show up.

I was wondering this. How often does it turn out that a drug has no serious downsides? I guess penicillin was, if you're not allergic. (There is microbes evolving antibiotic resistance, but that's probably not a concern for ozempic.)

Try taking strong antibiotics for 2+ weeks. The list of serious downsides will be quite long

All the usable refrigerants were either flammable, toxic, or highly ozone depleting, or a combination, up until the 90s…

Pretty sure R290 is flammable and I believe being used more and more

Yes, R600 even more so, there are some very expensive exotic refrigerants that are not, but they literally didn’t exist pre 90s.

Ozempic's side effects range from frequent diarrhea to pancreatitis and vision loss. Individuals can consider whether the benefits outweigh the costs. But it isn't free. We might try a Fermi problem to estimate how many of those cheerful Ozempic influencers talk about pancreatitis.

Side effects are real but obesity kills too. Importantly, GLP-1 agonists can also inhibit addictive behaviors (alcohol and substance abuse, gambling) due to a brain chemistry mechanism. Additional harm reduction to consider.

https://ourworldindata.org/obesity

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-new-weight-...

Thyroid cancer is one catch.

Refrigerants contribute to global warming, no?

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