Diet pill, eat what you want

A pill to prevent weight gain? Screwing around with the natural balance in your body is not a good thing. Even if they were successful in creating such a pill, it would likely wreak havoc on the body over time.

The irony is that if someone was ever successful in creating such a pill, the company that funded it would become the richest company in the world.

It's sad to know that instead of spending research funds on cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's, they opt for a weight loss pill....

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

So assuming it works it is a pill that encourages people to waste food. Yeah....awesome. His about instead of becoming pathological about food consumption as a society we work instead towards viewing food as fuel and a limited resource because that is what it is.

I mean seriously..yeah, let's all overproduced food in developed wealthy nations and lower agricultural resources by depleting soils just so we can pop a pill and crap it all out without actually getting any value from having consumed it. Meanwhile in undeveloped nations people continue to suffer from malnutrition. That sounds like some sort of description of one if the levels of hell from Dante's inferno not something to strive to accomplish.

Reminds one of the hedonism of cultures past, no? Ended well for them.

I'm curious about why so many people react negatively to the idea of some kind of medication to help people who are overweight or obese to lose weight. Do you feel the same way about nicotine patches to help smokers quit smoking, or about alcohol (our body has no need of it; surely this is a waste of resources too?), or question people who drive their car to work then have to hit the gym to get exercise that they wouldn't need if they had ridden their bike?

Fact is our society has a huge fat problem (one-third of adults are overweight), and 95% of people who lose weight regain it. Something is really screwed up to create this endemic in the western world, and it is clearly not an easy problem to solve or else it would have been solved by now. (Do you really think people today are greedier and lazier than previous generations, or rather that something has changed either in our food chain or modern living that makes it harder for us to maintain a healthy weight?)

If hypothetically there was a pill that would help people maintain a steady healthy weight, this would literally save lives as it would presumably also greatly reduce the amount of obesity-related illness - diabetes, heart disease, etc. It would greatly improve the quality of lives not just for the millions who are overweight and obese, but also for their families, with flow on benefits to employers and general society.

That's not to say that the pill in the linked article meets the criteria for the hypothetical wonder pill. The article clearly outlines that it has only been trialled in mice and has some side-effects that would not be acceptable in humans. But if there was a medicine that helped people maintain a healthy weight without bad side effects, it would be a godsend.

Luciicul wrote: »

I'm curious about why so many people react negatively to the idea of some kind of medication to help people who are overweight or obese to lose weight. Do you feel the same way about nicotine patches to help smokers quit smoking, or about alcohol (our body has no need of it; surely this is a waste of resources too?), or question people who drive their car to work then have to hit the gym to get exercise that they wouldn't need if they had ridden their bike?

Fact is our society has a huge fat problem (one-third of adults are overweight), and 95% of people who lose weight regain it. Something is really screwed up to create this endemic in the western world, and it is clearly not an easy problem to solve or else it would have been solved by now. (Do you really think people today are greedier and lazier than previous generations, or rather that something has changed either in our food chain or modern living that makes it harder for us to maintain a healthy weight?)

If hypothetically there was a pill that would help people maintain a steady healthy weight, this would literally save lives as it would presumably also greatly reduce the amount of obesity-related illness - diabetes, heart disease, etc. It would greatly improve the quality of lives not just for the millions who are overweight and obese, but also for their families, with flow on benefits to employers and general society.

That's not to say that the pill in the linked article meets the criteria for the hypothetical wonder pill. The article clearly outlines that it has only been trialled in mice and has some side-effects that would not be acceptable in humans. But if there was a medicine that helped people maintain a healthy weight without bad side effects, it would be a godsend.

I don't think people react wrong (at least not me) to the idea of a drug that helps people lose weight. The issue is the approach, which as they pointed out already, is an enormous waste of resources, and doesn't really seem to fix the issue either (I'm failing to see how a person that supposedly can eat all they want, then take a pill to only absorb some of those calories, will eventually learn self control and not become dependent on the pill for the rest of their life).

It's not the same thing as a nicotine patch, since those help *quit* smoking. The equivalent to the pill here would be a "patch" that allows a smoker to smoke all they want without the known side effects. There's no drug either that allows an alcoholic to keep drinking whatever they want without consequences. I also fail to see how the lack of alcohol or cigarettes will be detrimental for any society, as it obviously is in the case of food.

Producing food uses not only the soil were it was produced, but there's also large amounts of energy used in the farming, transporting, processing, storing, marketing.. And it requires lots of water, arguably the most important resource for human life. So it consumes soils, water, energy, and human resources. And in turn it produces wastes on packaging, on carbon foot print, contaminated water.. All this to feed someone that doesn't need it.

I think there's a fundamental moral issue with this drug, one that feeds individualism and consumerism. Wouldn't it be morally better to research a drug that focus on making a person less hungry without side effects? Or wouldn't it be better to put some effort into teaching people how to properly eat, or researching how we could better teach them, better reach them?