Adverse reactions to Tirzepatide and related ‘semaglutides’ lead to spike in hospitalisations and 10 deaths. Labour wants millions to take it, despite appalling track record of manufacturer
As Skwawkbox has previously covered, Health Secretary Wes Streeting plans to force millions of people to take slimming drug Tirzepatide (also marketed as Mounjaro), starting with unemployed people the government considers overweight, but ultimately moving on to the wider population, with the threat of withheld NHS treatment for those who refuse.
Streeting has already signed a £279m deal with the drug’s manufacturer Eli Lilly – and has done so despite knowing that the drug has serious and sometimes lethal side effects – lethal in up to one in a hundred people who take it, according to studies – and despite Lilly’s appalling track record of covering up side effects and illegally marketing its drugs that have cost the company criminal convictions and billions in compensation payouts.
Now, even before Streeting begins to roll out his plan, the use of Tirzepatide and other slimming drugs has already led to hundreds of people being hospitalised because of side effects – four times higher number than the UK regulator has admitted so far. The total number of ‘adverse reactions’ is just under fifteen thousand – more than double the number admitted only a month ago.
Advocates of the drug say the figures are driven by online sales and unsupervised use – but the numbers are a chilling reminder of what the consequences could be if the drug is rolled out to millions, particularly coercively as in the case of unemployed people facing benefit sanctions, or patients facing denial of treatment.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has refused to list all the reasons for hospital admissions or adverse reactions, but the drugs known side effects include pancreatitis, which is potentially fatal, and Tirzepatide has been observed to cause cancers in animal studies.
Last month, the MHRA issued a warning to doctors that it had received reports of ten deaths linked to the use of weight loss jabs. At least one, North Lanarkshire nurse Susan McGowan, died after after taking Tirzepatide injections.
Reckless disregard for the lives of vulnerable people is not a one-off in the Labour government. Keir Starmer has earned the nickname ‘Sir Kid Starver’ by retaining the Tories’ ‘two-child cap’ on benefits, despite knowing that 1.5m children in this country are in poverty and that it would cost the UK economy billions less to scrap the cap than to keep it. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has deprived around ten million pensioners of the Winter Fuel Allowance, even though Labour’s own analysis reveals that this will kill at least four thousand pensioners a year.
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This is little better than the official legalisation of attempted murder.
Don’t you just love the Rules Based Order.
Any comments in defence on this matter from this site’s supporter of this legalised threat to life for the sake of profits for the US corporations who are the real constituents of Streeting and the rest of the UK establishment ?
Or have things gone all quite on the (alleged) Caribbean front?
Please don’t wake them up…
Using the nation as lab rats, or guinea pigs, if you prefer for the benefit of multinational corporations. Helping people back to work. Benefit sanctions if you don’t comply. This shower of a government are getting more like a dictatorship with each passing day.
Oh, it’s a lot worse than that exiledinardmhaca.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePS7hZo5mB4&ab_channel=NovaraMedia
Looks like Starmer is in the process of selling the UK on the cheap to Blackrock – whose “investments” * in Ukraine look like turning into dust – as compensation for its losses in 404.
Even the right wing are up in arms:
“Dear Labour MP’s – did you go into politics to watch a LABOUR PM try to flog the country on the cheap to Blackrock while cutting winter fuel payments to pensioners George Osborne style??”
– Dominic Cummings
“Blackrock will buy all the farm land and pay no inheritance tax or any tax for that matter.”
Aaron Banks
NHS, farming/agriculture, utilities, transport infrastructure, ‘freeports’, education, housing, social services and more all up for grabs.
Starmer will be selling Town Halls, City Centres, housing estates, tracts of UK land, the Government and the populace at large to the pirate asset management parasites at the present rate of the theft that is privatisation.
*As detailed by RFK Junior in the above video podcast.
And how long before there’s pressure to choose assisted dying, for those with long term health or care needs?
I try to refrain from commenting on a person’s appearance but, and I’m giving my age away here, stick a pair of NHS glasses on Streeting in that photograph above and he is the spitting image of ‘Billy Bunter’ on t.v. back in the day.
“A fictional character, Billy Bunter’s defining characteristics are his naive greed, self-indulgence…..he is [amongst other things] obtuse, deceitful, pompous, and conceited, but he is blissfully unaware of his defects.”
“The fat owl of the remove” is certainly a fitting description of this joke of a human being.
Needs a barrel of it injecting injecting into that fat head of his.
This whole idea of coercing people onto these drugs under threat of benefit sanction or denial of nhs treatment needs to be taken to a test case. The implications are terrifying.
That said, there’s plenty of MPs falling under the criteria that they want to impose on the public. Will it apply to them, too?
Should a ruling find it a legitimate course of action (and I very much doubt they will) The mps who would otherwise qualify to be put under the conditions should either have the injections themselves, or – or, better still AND – have their food allowance and subsidised scran and alcohol stopped.
By Kenan Malik in the Observer Sun 20 Oct:
Pumping the unemployed with weight loss drugs echoes Victorian attitudes to the poor
[A] pilot study is being launched, to test…Mounjaro, the market name for tirzepatide, an anti-diabetic and weight-loss injection produced by the US pharmaceutical giant Lilly. The government…hailed the company’s £279m stake in helping “develop transformative medicines” and “trial innovative approaches to treating obesity”. The Mounjaro trial, based in Manchester, will involve 3,000 people in a five-year study of the “non-clinical outcomes” of treatment to see, in particular, whether the drug can enable more people to return to the workplace…
…The hope that it may be possible to address this [economic inactivity], at least in part, through the use of jabs is beguiling, especially at a time when technical, as opposed to political or social, solutions are in vogue.
Drugs such as Wegovy or Mounjaro may well prove useful in helping individuals reduce weight, though their efficacy is far from certain, nor their side effects properly understood. [My bold]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/20/pumping-the-unemployed-with-weight-loss-drugs-echoes-victorian-attitudes-to-the-poor
From Paul Knaggs at Labour Heartlands October 16:
Labour’s Attempt to Medicate the Unemployed Away
The absurdity would be comical if it weren’t so chilling. This isn’t community healthcare or preventative action. It’s social engineering masquerading as public health policy.
Let us not mince words – this is eugenics dressed up in the language of public health. It is an attempt to mould human bodies to fit the demands of capital, rather than creating an economy that serves human needs. It is, in short, utterly repugnant to anyone who believes in human dignity and social justice.
If Labour truly wants to “make work pay,” there are far more effective – and ethical – solutions at hand. A £15 minimum wage, as once promised, would be a start. Strengthening unions, investing in public services, and implementing an industrial strategy to create meaningful jobs – these are the policies that would truly improve lives and livelihoods.
If Labour want to tackle the obesity and diabetic problems plaguing the Western world then they must regulate the UK food industry…
But such measures would require challenging the power of the wealthy so-called elites who have benefited from decades of neoliberal policy. It seems Starmer’s Labour lacks the courage for such a fight, preferring instead to literally drug the unemployed into compliance.
David A Ricks, the chairman and chief executive of Lilly, said: “We welcome this opportunity to partner with the UK Government on tackling and preventing disease, and accelerating innovation to advance care delivery models.” I bet he does…
This, dear readers, is the brave new world of Labour under Starmer – a dystopian vision where the solution to societal ills is not to change the system, but to chemically alter the populace to better fit within it.
https://labourheartlands.com/labours-attempt-to-medicate-the-unemployed-away/
This piece from Richard Murphy discusses some of the key points from October’s House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee report entitled ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’:
Obesity has a simple cause: the food industry is poisoning us
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/11/17/obesity-has-a-simple-cause-the-food-industry-is-poisoning-us/
As a long time Skwawkbox supporter this reads like ignorant, scaremongering nonsense. I loathe Streeting and his big mouth But no one is ‘forced’ and all that rubbish about forcing overweight unemployed onto a drug is so much rubbish.. This is akin to the kind of conspiracy theories we see perpetrated by rightwing lunatics on Musk’s X. People who should not be on weight loss drugs are trying it out because of the distorted view many have their bodies -(a lot of women feel stigmatised). They should not be misusing this drug if they have a BMI under 30. ALL drugs have risks as you well know and the facts in your report are skimpy and largely unevidenced. But being very overweight also causes so many illnesses as well as depression. It is just not as simple as using willpower. After decades of dieting the ‘hunger control mechanisms’ in the brain start send signals of craving that are as powerful as any other addiction. Wegovy and Mounjaro help with this and with feelings of fullness. I was unable to get the drug on the NHS because of the postcode lottery and poor East Sussex commissioning body who have been promising the drug for people like me for 3 years since NICE approved it. I was lucky a friend bought it for me and I felt less hungry while eating more healthily than I used to because of the appetite suppression. So, to reiterate – it works on the craving centres as well as digesting food more slowly. It will not be good for people with certain other conditions like gastritis and bowel disorders. But for me, I can now have a replacement knee operation without risking dying on the operating table. I feel so much better -just three stone off. I would like to lose more but as I can’t exercise much because of arthritis, I will have to wait until I can walk again for that. It will not be suitable for everyone – and constipation is one side effect for many which has to be addressed with gentle laxative. But those with BMI of well over 30 which can be life threatening for some – particularly those with heart problems, can benefit.
Yeah.
Well they gave soldiers and sailors Bermuda shirts and shorts and cheap sunglasses and then ordered them to enjoy the show of watching the bomb exploded said it was healthy to sail through the fallout clouds.
They put unmarried mothers in mental institutions and took their children away from them.
Then they said thalidomide was alright for pregnant women.
They used depleted uranium shells without letting the squaddies know the risks.
They tried to justify all of them at the time
They made people work for their dole. They said the sick were mainly fit for work, so they should work.
And the public generally agreed because of the narrative.
And now it’s another very badly mistaken narrative, playing on prejudices they’ve already implanted.
So please don’t tell me they WON’T force this on people, because they’re damned well gonna try to. Listen to the underlying messages they’re spewing ffs. It all of it points to the same fucking thing.
Unemployed = Not contributing = Worthless = Burden
Sick = Blagging = Burden
Obese = Lifestyle choice = Burden.
PS. Ever wondered why tv quiz shows never have unemployed contestants anymore?
Three years ago – before the tirzepatide, a pharmaceutical glucagon-like peptide-synthetic GLP-1 agononist was approved by the FDA (and then 4 months later the MHRA) what would you have done to reduce your obesity? Well do it now!! Mother nature provides a whole range of better, natural GLP-1 agonists that can, when you use the effectively work BETTER than tirzepatide. Find them and use them.
In your shoes, I certainly would not want to use a molecule whose primary objective is to reduce insulin insensitivity for wight loss. You think you’ve got problems now, don’t add depression and thyroid cancer to the list!.
FFS find a good doctor, or start taking ownership of your own health and obtain advice accordingly. If you were a friend or a loved-one I certainly would try to dissuade you from using tirzepatide. Please find and use non-pharmaceutical GLP-1 agonists. Tirzepatide (like all powerful pharmaceuticals) is only synthesising and copying natural phytochemicals, which, mostly, would not cause renal, gastric, endocrine or thyroid problems.
Good luck poetrymuseum. It’s do-able.
Please remember not everyone can diet/ exercise themselves thin! I am disabled with spinal fractures, massive nerve damage and chronic pain. Every second is pain, and moving is more pain up to the point of blacking out. Now I just established I can’t exercise and no swimming is the same. So yes I am obese whoopie! Anyhow to diet to lose weight I currently eat 1 meal a day and still put on weight. So I am exactly the sort of unproductive person scumbags like Streeting will try and force take this rubbish, they have done this before to disabled people.
Oh and yes I am a trained chef so I understand the nutrition/. The last kid they tried to send me to in hospital I think I made them cry.
Wise words grandad. A good doctor never prescribes exercise or starvation to address obesity. Addressing mineral and vitamin deficiencies, microbiome irregularities and other metabolic factors is always the valid first step in diagnosis. Sometimes simply addressing these things will improve a person’s metabolism, weight and health. I admire your fortitude grandad. Respect.
As Toffee’s post hints, the issue is about a total breakdown of trust – at least on the part of anyone who knows their arse from a hole in the ground.
The track record of the system and those acting on behalf of an out of control oligarchy had no credibility.
From KernowDamo:
Could Labour’s Wes Streeting be about to LOSE HIS SEAT?
Corrupt or illegal electoral irregularities. I hope Leanne Mohamad is on solid ground here. Streeting’s 528 vote majority should certainly be looked into. Forensically.
Thanks PW
Indeed. No smoke without fire, and smarmerite labour has many questions to answer after several questionable – to say the keast – selection and balloting processes.