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Chasing Life

The Big Business Behind Weight Loss Drugs

Chasing Life

CNN

Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.58K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s become a multibillion-dollar business: weight loss drugs. Demand is high, as is the cost. How did medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound become so popular and so profitable? And what kind of impact might they have on the future of food and healthcare? Dr. Sanjay Gupta turns to his CNN colleague Meg Tirrell for answers, and a little context about the business behind these new medications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Like some kind of Pizza Ninja, Domino's are slicing their prices.

0:05.0

Domino's price slice.

0:07.0

Small pizzas now 8 quid, medium now 10 quid, and large now 12 quid.

0:12.0

Yet we're making cuts too.

0:14.0

In 11th of February 24, minimum delivery spend, charges and areas may apply.

0:18.0

Tous and see, see Domino's dot-co. UK.

0:20.0

The chairman of a biotech company, I was having lunch with him one day, and he was like,

0:26.3

hey, you should know, I'm taking this diabetes drug for weight loss.

0:29.5

And he was like, you know, these drugs really work for weight loss.

0:32.0

I'm not diabetic, but I'm taking it anyway and I was like okay that's interesting that was several years ago

0:37.2

That's CNN medical correspondent my colleague and my friend Meg Tur For years now, first as a senior health science reporter at

0:45.8

CNBC and now as a CNN medical correspondent, she has been following the rise of new

0:51.4

anti-obesity medications known as GLP1 drugs. You know them as Ozempic and Wagovi.

0:58.4

I've got to tell you, we all have something to learn from Meg.

1:03.0

Why?

1:04.0

Because she was one of the first to really dig into the business side of these medications,

1:08.0

the costs, the surges in demand, and the subsequent shortages.

1:13.0

But even Meg admits, she never really predicted that weight loss medications

1:18.0

would become the multi-billion dollar industry that it's become.

1:22.0

I sort of didn't really put it together because obesity drugs

1:25.4

have been not a space that pharma has wanted to be for the last decade. They

1:29.2

really failed with the last crop they tried and so it just sort of went out of my head I wasn't

...

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