Dhruv Khullar

I think one area that really gives me a little bit of confidence here is that these medications have kind of blown up on social media and elsewhere over the past few years.

But versions of these medications have been around for two decades now.

So the first GLP-1 medication came out in 2005, 2006, exanatide.

And that had to be taken twice a day and it didn't have as powerful effects on weight loss.

And so it wasn't kind of the phenomenon that these newer GLP-1s have become.

And we haven't seen those really concerning side effects that have sometimes cropped up with other medications over the course of five or 10 years.

That's not to say that these specific formulations couldn't have other types of side effects, but it does give me some confidence that what we're seeing here is likely to be a more positive story.

I think that's a really important point, especially when it comes to children or adolescents.

It's one thing to commit someone who is in their 50s or 60s to a medication that they're going to need to take for the rest of their life.

It's quite different when someone is 10 or 15 or 20 years old.

And so I do think it raises a really important set of questions about the treatment model here.

Is it really the case that people are going to have to be on these medications for the long term?

Or is there a way to use these GLP-1 medications as a bridge

to other types of interventions.

I think the other thing that this raises for me is that, of course, as you're saying, when a medication is so powerful, it becomes tempting to use it and not continue to push on the more societal factors

that are creating the epidemic that we're in.

We're not addressing the root causes of obesity and diabetes and addiction.

And that's the reason that we are using these medications in the way that we are.

Of course, I'm the first to want to change the food system or the built environment or many of the other levers that

that we might want to work on to create a more healthful society.