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Comment by jonahx | Hacker News Reader

> The root cause isn't being solved, only the adverse effects are temporarily inhibited so long as people continue to afford dependency on the pharmaceutical industry. How can any medical professional support this?

> I just don't get the lack of skepticism.

Simple answer is people like to eat, lack discipline, and want to look good. None of these will ever change, and so the economic pressure is immense and unstoppable. Until it's proven that these drugs have serious side effects (and that's a real possibility), people will gamble on the risk/reward.

I wouldn't touch them yet myself, but I can see it's a fait accompli. As for solving the root cause, doctors and policy makers have tried everything, to little or no avail. And so we're back to those 3 variables that won't change.

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> Simple answer is people like to eat, lack discipline, and want to look good

this is not the answer to the question they asked, just a useless triviality. They are not asking _why_ people would like this, it's obvious, they are asking how is this possible to continue eating garbage and living a bad lifestyle, and keep losing weight, and is it then still a health positive or not?

People on semaglutides may not actually continue to eat garbage - with a smaller total caloric intake it becomes a lot more important to use it on nutritious food, since your body still needs all the same vitamins and minerals. And without the same cravings doing that becomes easier.

> continue eating garbage and living a bad lifestyle, and keep losing weight

Easy, you don't. Just like someone on Nicorette isn't as unhealthy as a smoker. These drugs curb addiction, so you eat less.

These people lose weight because they have taken all the steps to lose weight. Less food less weight, it's that simple.

It was approved for medical use in the US in 2017

In June 2008, a phase II clinical trial began studying semaglutide, a once-weekly diabetes therapy as a longer-acting alternative to liraglutide

> Simple answer is people like to eat, lack discipline, and want to look good.

This is indeed a simple answer, and way over simplified. You can walk into any grocery store in the US and most of the floor space is dedicated to packaged poison and chemicals masquerading as food.

That's part of it, for sure. But even fixing that, I am confident you'd still have an obesity epidemic in the US (and many other places). The causal tendrils of the problem go so deep. And fixing grocery choices won't happen. It would require a level of government intervention and control that wouldn't be tolerated. You could argue it was done successfully with cigarettes, but food would be a thousand times harder legally, culturally, and practically.

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