IIn early 2023, Lars Fluagaard-Jorgensen, chief executive of Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, and Pinder Sahota, vice president of the company's UK subsidiary, met in Whitehall with then-Health Secretary Steve Barclay, head of the UK He met with Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty and others in Whitehall. Health authorities and financial authorities. They discussed the potential for a pilot scheme to improve obesity care in the UK.
According to internal documents obtained by the agency, observerNovo Nordisk wanted “data from the Department for Work and Pensions” to “help us understand the profile of those most likely to return to the labor market”. These individuals could be targeted by Wegovy, the brand name for the company's weight loss drug semaglutide.
Simon Capewell, emeritus professor of public health at the University of Liverpool, said it was “unethical to target people for economic reasons and for the benefit of the state, rather than prioritizing their personal interests and health”. ”. He also questioned the scientific “integrity” of trial plans to test the effectiveness of drugs to help people return to the labor market, but said he had already “deemed the DWP to be on the borderline of returning to work”. “There are” people were using. That would be “great marketing for the company.”
Novo Nordisk's research never materialized. But 18 months later, a pilot study is being launched to test Mounjaro, the market name for tirzepatide, an anti-diabetic and weight loss injectable made by US pharmaceutical giant Lilly, not Wegovy. The government touted Lilly's attendance at last week's Investment Summit and welcomed his remarks. £279 million stake in the company It supports the “development of innovative medicines” and the “testing of innovative approaches to obesity treatment.” of Manchester-based Munjaro Trialplans to enroll 3,000 people in a five-year study on the treatment's “non-clinical outcomes” to see, among other things, whether the drug allows more people to return to work. “The waistband is wider,” Health Secretary Wes Streeting wrote in an editorial for the newspaper. daily telegraph“is holding back our economy.”
Politicians are particularly troubled by the growing number of people who are unable to engage in economic activities due to long-term illnesses. The hope that the use of jabs might at least partially address this problem is appealing, especially at a time when technological rather than political or social solutions are in vogue.
Drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro may prove helpful in helping individuals lose weight, but their effectiveness is far from certain and side effects are not properly understood. But that is very different from the government's strategy of using people as a means of returning them to the labor market.
Criticisms leveled at last year's proposed Wegovy trial may apply to the new Mounjaro study as well. In other words, as researcher Dr. Dorie van Tureken says, the study treats people based on their “potential economic value, rather than primarily on the basis of need or health needs.” . Obesity researcher at the University of Cambridge, spoke last week. Many studies have shown a link between unemployment and obesity, but the relationship is not simple. There is some evidence Obesity reduces employment opportunities, but obesity is not that important cause unemployment Because when you lose your job, you gain weight.
George Orwell understood why. “A millionaire may enjoy breakfast with orange juice and a Livita biscuit. The unemployed do not,” he said. Road to Wigan Pierdenounced middle-class rants about working-class eating habits. “When one is unemployed—underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable—one wants…a little something ‘tasty.’” Unemployment is “an unending misery that must be continually alleviated.” This is why “the physical average of industrial cities is horribly low.” It is “endless misery”, made worse today by a lack of decent jobs, a lack of social infrastructure from youth clubs to libraries to pubs, poor transport and shockingly low benefits. .
However, the challenges of unemployment and poverty continue to be seen as personal problems, a matter of laziness or lifestyle choices. Margaret Thatcher said in 1978: catholic herald Poverty does not exist, and even if it did, it was simplybecause people don't know “I don't know how to budget or how to use my income,” and at the root of this is a “character flaw.”
It would be easy to dismiss this as simply Thatcherite slander. But the belief that the blame for unemployment and poverty lies with the unemployed and the poor themselves, and that such problems reveal moral rather than political or social deficiencies, has deep historical roots and continues to this day. continues to shape policy.
When William Beveridge wrote his 1942 report He described the “five great evils” that plagued society as scarcity, disease, ignorance, filth, and laziness, which he said helped lay the foundations for the post-war welfare state. It's not “unemployed” or “unemployed,” it's “laziness.”
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As society moved away from the spirit of the Victorian Poor Laws, which attributed poverty and unemployment to the “laziness” and “illness” of the poor, and sought to create a modern welfare state and National Health Service. Yet society remains, it is an echo of the old moralistic vision and concept of the “unjustly poor”. In recent decades, New Labor'sfamily with problems', George Osborne divided the nation into 'Strovers' and 'Skeevers'. Iain Duncan Smith impression To teach the poor that children cost money, he set a cap on benefits for parents with two or more children, but apparently they didn't know that until he showed up.
Giving weight loss jabs to the unemployed fits into this history. Similar to Liz Kendall's suggestion last week:job coach” Visiting hospitalized mental health patients. And how long will it be before those who refuse to cooperate are sanctioned?More than a dozen years ago, David Cameron threatens Withdrawing benefits from claimants who refuse treatment for obesity. It is not hard to imagine that such a plan would surface again. Once the blame is placed on the individual and unemployment and poverty are seen as moral rather than political problems, coercion is rarely far away.
Unemployment is not a medical condition. Medical care should not be received within DWP states. Confusing medicine and society makes it even more difficult to improve lives in either field.
