We’ve Accepted Wegovy and Zepbound. The Next Phase Is Harder.
An international committee of experts will release an interim report in early 2025 outlining criteria for diagnosing “clinical” obesity.
What happens now?
Photographer: Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg
This time last year, people were still bickering about whether Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Zepbound represented a shortcut to losing weight or a medical breakthrough. But with reams of data on the drugs’ health benefits beyond reducing obesity — including mitigating heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and sleep apnea — most seem to have finally accepted their potentially immense societal value.
Now comes the hard part. These highly effective drugs — GLP-1s — are changing the way obesity is viewed and treated. The changes are coming so fast and could benefit so many that they’ve created new questions and ethical quandaries for medical professionals, including who should get them.