Diet pill, eat what you want

@brisadeldesierto If your argument is about use of resources, then surely should also be arguing for people to have sedentary lives so we don't need so much energy or food - don't go to the gym, don't work out - because these activities chew up resources.

Far biggest waste of resources is industry producing extra food for subsidies that are not needed, combined with destroying any food that are not deemed to look good enough (e.g. bananas that aren't the preferred size or shape). Doesn't matter how much we individuals minimise our own waste and carbon footprints when industry contributes many times waste more without care. (Sure; we do what we can in our own lives, but it is false to heap responsibility on the shoulders of ordinary individuals when corporations, industries, and governments have a far bigger impact than we ever could.)

It's a strawman argument to claim we shouldn't help obese people with (hypothetical) medication because they should simply stop using extra resources.

It is a flawed belief to assume that obesity is all about overeating and waste of resources. Medication can lead to weight gain, health conditions can lead to weight gain, some studies have shown that weight loss can lead to lowered resting metabolic rate even when people eat well and exercise (e.g. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2016/11/27/why-so-many-people-regain-weight-after-dieting) which means they put on weight while eating less food than others, stress, hormones, sleep, etc can all affect weight without drawing on any extra resources.

'Morality' - to leave a person untreated because you want to teach them a lesson? Righto.

To be honest I think the mass "education" is part of the reason we have these problems. I was taught in school that breads and cereals are what you can eat heaps of - 6-8 serves a day - yet what I have realised as an adult is that this actually makes me gain weight. When you look at the impact of industry lobbyists on public health policy and 'education', you have to realise it is not an unbiased source of information. Half the health fads have been created by the health sector pushing one idea or another before there is conclusive evidence (e.g. remember for a time that eggs were bad because they are high in cholesterol? But then a couple decades later they realised that cholesterol in your diet is not the same as blood cholesterol, and that removing cholesterol from the diet can actually increase blood cholesterol? Or when they told pregnant women to avoid allergens like peanuts so their foetus wouldn't develop allergies... then after there was a spike in babies born with allergies they realised that it's better for pregnant women to eat a wide variety of foods including peanuts to minimise allergies... total reversals in health advice).

Honestly, I don't think there is any health or diet advice that is applicable to everyone. We each have to discover what works for us, and half of what mucks us around is listening to generic advice that might work for 60% of the population but not necessarily for us specifically. (If something works for 90% of the population, but you are one of the 10% it doesn't work for...).

The problem is not just at an individual level, the stats show it is something happening in our society - driven by many complex factors. Our society is more 'educated' than at any point in history, yet we struggle with some of the basics of life. We have more obesity, more depression, more suicidality, more auto-immune diseases, more allergies, more man-made illnesses, etc. I'm not saying a weight loss pill is the solution, but the "eat less, move more" message that has been repeated adnauseum for decades clearly isn't working for 1/3rd of the population either.

In the country I live in, medications are regulated. They aren't handed out willy-nilly. Any such medication would only be provided to those who need it, under medical supervision, and would no doubt also be provided alongside health information about eating and exercise as doctors already do. Just because a medical treatment exists (e.g liposuction) doesn't mean everyone uses it, or that people will intentionally overindulge to capitalise on it.

The benefit of science is to research lots of things, better understand how things work, and hopefully find solutions. Research is being done in many fields; researching solutions regarding weightloss (which affects about 1/3rd of the western adult population) doesn't mean they aren't also researching other important things too.