Sketchy diet pills? So ’90s. For the first time in over a decade, the FDA has approved two new weight loss drugs: Qysmia and Belviq. According to writer and “infectious-disease specialist” Kent Sepkowitz, the drugs are cause for celebration, not just because of rising medical costs and obesity-related deaths but because the medication might “pull obesity out of the realm of moral failing and into the arid, less dramatic, but thankfully more reality-based, world of medical disease.”
More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, and around 112,000 people (see edit note below) die each year from obesity-related issues. Associated medical costs add up to around $147 billion annually. We can all agree that those statistics are troubling, but it’s not as easy to figure out a solution. Sepkowitz thinks the “public has reacted as usual to the alarming scope of the problem-with avoidance of the facts, finger-pointing, claims of misinterpretation,” but that pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers have “more productively” come up with some usable products that will improve peoples’ health, save the health-care system money and, he believes, change attitudes about obesity:
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