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Comment by can16358p | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

Reminds me of the alleged neurological benefits from use of hallucinogenics - but they're still banned.

source?

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.

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).

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