

SALLY BECK
On September 19 in these pages Sally Beck reported on the downsides of the newly popular weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic, that celebrities as well as politicians had greeted as a ‘panacea’ for both personal weight problems and the public-health obesity crisis. In the weeks since, these drugs have come under scrutiny elsewhere. The Mercola website, for example, reported that Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs have been linked to 162 deaths in the US, and that adverse reactions increased by 40 per cent in six months as their use expanded. Furthermore these medications are associated with serious side effects, including pancreatitis, bowel obstruction and stomach paralysis, 80 to 90 per cent of users suffering at least one adverse event. Sally now reports on the latest news of weight-loss drug deaths in the UK – and the ‘gaps’ in relevant reporting.
ON WEDNESDAY evening ITV News broke the story that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had received reports of 18 deaths caused by weight-loss drugs, ten relating to weight loss only and eight relating to weight loss and diabetes control.
The news went on to report the case of Lorna Edgar, who said she struggled to lose weight after having children, and when her mental health was affected she asked her doctor for help. Her doctor told her that with a BMI of 28 she did not qualify for a prescription – one must be ‘obese’, which means a BMI of at least 30. Mrs Edgar then bought the weight-loss jabs online from a registered pharmacy. She told ITV she lost a stone but collapsed within three weeks of taking the drugs.
She was bedridden for months and said, ‘It felt like I’d had a car crash inside me. I just collapsed on the bathroom floor. I was screaming, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t walk, I was bedridden, I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t get down steps, I couldn’t go to the toilet, I couldn’t take my kids to school.’
The mother of two had developed pancreatitis, which is potentially fatal; her gallbladder was removed and she now has permanent bowel problems.
Health professionals contacted by the programme blamed misuse. Dr Vicky Price, an A&E consultant on Merseyside, who regularly treats people suffering complications related to obesity drugs, appeared on the programme and said, ‘Most of the patients that I’ve seen have got it from an online pharmacy’.
But what the ITV report never mentioned is that Mrs Edgar’s side effects are clearly listed in the manufacturers’ patient-information leaflet, which says common reactions include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pain, constipation. Less common reactions – in one-to-five percent of patients – include hypoglycaemia, pancreatitis, gallbladder disease, kidney damage, and eye problems including diabetic retinopathy. Rare but serious side effects are listed as intestinal obstruction, lung aspiration (food or liquid getting into the lungs) and serious allergic reactions. Ozempic also carries a warning for the risk of thyroid C-cell tumours – thyroid cancer.
The drugs reported to the MHRA’s Yellow Card Scheme were semaglutide and liraglutide, brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and Saxenda manufactured by Novo Nordisk, and tirzepatide, brand name Mounjaro manufactured by Eli Lilly. Both companies said they take patient health seriously and stress that the drugs have been assessed for safety by the MHRA.
The MHRA asks doctors to warn patients of potential serious side effects and look out for misuse, but still insists the benefits outweigh the risks.
My original report published on September 19 this years warned of the risks. It follows below.
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OZEMPIC and Mounjaro are hailed as weight-loss wonder drugs, endorsed by celebrities such as Sharon Osbourne, Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson and actor Stephen Fry. With the exception of Allison Pearson, who is new to the drug, they no longer take it; Sharon Osbourne because she lost too much weight and Stephen Fry because he was vomiting five times a day.
Last week, model Kate Moss’s sister Lottie was rushed to hospital after overdosing on Ozempic that a friend bought under the counter. The 26-year-old was violently ill and suffered a seizure. She said: ‘I would rather die than use Ozempic again.’
Ms Pearson began taking it after a health scare. She was taken to hospital in an ambulance with chest pains and after a battery of blood tests doctors told her she was pre-diabetic, needed to lose weight and prescribed Mounjaro to help her lose two stone.
Signposting the drug is well-meaning and compelling, as losing weight is linked with preventing type 2 diabetes, avoiding heart attacks and strokes, all preventions that save the NHS time and money caring for the obese and their multiple associated health problems.
If only it were that simple. All pharmaceuticals come with side effects, and weight loss drugs cause particularly nasty ones with 70 per cent of users choosing to stop within two years. Side effects are so bad that there is a slew of lawsuits against manufacturer Novo Nordisk with claims of permanent injury. These include cardiac arrest and bowel removal.
There are plenty of victims: a 45-year-old woman choked on her own vomit, a 23-year-old man died from vomiting, nausea and a rapid heart rate. A 56-year-old mum died of a gastrointestinal illness having constant vomiting and diarrhoea over five months to slim for her daughter’s wedding. She collapsed at home with a brown substance foaming from her mouth.
The US drugs watchdog FAERS has recorded 162 deaths linked to the drugs and 62,000 reactions, 46,000 in 2022. A massive 10,000 reactions were classified as serious. Serious means a patient was hospitalised or suffered a life-threatening event. Reactions include the painful condition pancreatitis, when the pancreas becomes inflamed, mania, a surge in blood pressure, ischemic colitis which can result in the removal of the colon, intestinal blockage, called ileus, which slows the passage of food through the intestines potentially causing them to rupture leading to sepsis and multi-organ failure, and cardiac arrest. Obese patients are at higher risk of suffering serious side-effects caused by these drugs, because of their weight.

Critics say that a safer, healthier and more obvious solution is to provide access to nutritious, unprocessed food. For a fraction of the cost, a prescription of three organic meals per day would eradicate obesity and type 2 diabetes; both problems are caused by an unhealthy diet.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the founder of the online news outlet Children’s Health Defense, will become Donald Trump’s health tzar if Trump is elected President. He plans a crackdown on all dangerous drugs, including weight loss drugs, which he says are largely unnecessary.
‘Diabetes is treatable with diet and exercise, so is obesity,’ Mr Kennedy said. ‘We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world and it’s destroying us. It costs $4.3trillion (£3.3 trillion) a year, which is five times our military budget. Today, 95 per cent of our healthcare expenditure is spent on chronic disease.
‘We’re getting sicker and sicker; we’re paying twice what Europeans do and we have the worst healthcare outcomes in the world. It’s all because we’re being mass poisoned by processed foods, by chemicals and by pharmaceutical drugs.
‘Ozempic costs $1,500 (£1,150) for a week. There’s now a Bill before Congress that would force insurance companies to pay for it for every American who is obese. That’s 74 per cent of our population. That’s going to be $3trillion (£2.3trillion) a year. For a tiny fraction of that you could give every American three meals a day of organic food and diabetes would disappear overnight. Diabetes is treatable with food, with exercise, and obesity is.’
It is a sensible solution, but we know in our ‘quick fix’ culture, reliant on a nanny system, that does not work and will not be adopted. The reintroduction of compulsory domestic science classes might help, as might spending more money on school meals. Every school should have its own kitchen and cooks who know about nutrition.
What is actually happening is that drug manufacturers can look forward to a £2.3trillion ($3trillion) windfall if America passes the Bill that sees weight-loss drugs routinely prescribed to their obese population.
Ozempic, Mounjaro, Saxenda, Zepbound, and Wegovy are essentially diabetes drugs of different strengths, prescribed off-label for weight loss. Saxenda was launched in 2015, Ozempic was introduced in 2018, and Wegovy was approved for diabetes in 2017 and for weight loss in 2021. All three are manufactured by Novo Nordisk and originally approved for diabetics. The company, based in Denmark, has become the most valuable company in Europe, entirely based on expectation of profits in the United States. Novo Nordisk is investing £3.2billion ($4billion) in its US manufacturing operation as demand booms.
Eli Lilly manufacture Mounjaro, which was approved for diabetics in 2022, but also used off-label for weight loss. In 2023, their type 2 diabetes drug Zepbound was also approved for weight loss.
Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, while tirzepatide is used in Mounjaro and Zepbound. More deaths were linked with semaglutide (94) than to tirzepatide (68). Liraglutide, sold under the brand names Victoza and Saxenda, is a weaker version of semaglutide.
They all mimic the body’s hormone, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), that is produced by the gut when we eat, particularly carbohydrates. GLP-1 is crucial in regulating glucose metabolism, stimulating insulin secretion, slowing the digestion process allowing for a gradual absorption of nutrients, and crucially, increasing feelings of fullness.
Professor of pathophysiology and biomedical scientist Dr Benjamin Bikman from Brigham Young University, Utah, the author of Why We Get Sick and How Not To Get Sick, is sceptical, worried that the weight loss is not permanent and that patients also lose muscle and bone density.
In an interview with Dr Zoë Harcombe, Dr Bikman (who can be found at the website Insulin IQ) said: ‘What these drugs do is amplify the effects of glucagon to a level we’ve never seen before. At a low dose these drugs seem to be beneficial for people with diabetes and a side-effect is losing weight. However, it didn’t take long for that to become the primary focus. And to lose 10kg to 15kg, you needed to up the dose.
‘There’s a report in the UK that shows that 70 per cent choose to get off the drug on their own. Their clinician is not deprescribing it, individuals are choosing to get off the drug because they’re feeling so sick.
‘About 40 per cent of the weight people lose is coming from lean mass. Some of that is water, but it also a substantial reduction in muscle and bone mass. For every 10kgs people lose, 4kgs is coming from muscle and bone. In desperation, some people might say “I’m going to take that”, but keep in mind that two years in the majority choose to come off the drug because of nausea. And now, they gain all the weight back. The fat comes back very easily, but the muscle and bone mass are lost and gone for ever. So now people are fatter than before.’
Calley Means is co-author with his sister Dr Casey Means of Good Energy, a book about how metabolic dysfunction is the underlying cause of chronic disease. He is also a graduate from Stanford and Harvard Business School. In conversation with Robert Kennedy Jr, he claimed: ‘The chronic disease treble hasn’t worked. The more statins we prescribe, the more heart disease goes up, the more SSRIs [antidepressants] we prescribe, suicide and depression go up, the more metformin [diabetes medication] we prescribe the more diabetes goes up. There hasn’t been a chronic disease treatment in history that has lowered the chronic disease it’s trying to treat.
‘In J P Morgan’s (the investment bankers) own estimates of Ozempic, they think as Ozempic prescriptions go up obesity in America will go up. This is all a game.’
This article (What ITV did not report about the 18 weight-loss drug deaths) was created and published by The Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Sally Beck
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