Weight Loss Drug Manufacturers Sued - Part 2

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In part one we looked at a lawsuit being brought by Jaclyn Bjorklund against Novo Nordisk (maker of Semaglutide - brand names Ozempic/Rybelsus/Wegovy) and Eli Lilly (maker of Tirzepatide - brand names Mounjaro/Zepbound) for the severe gastrointestinal side effects she experienced after taking Ozempic and then Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes. At the end I made the point that, for some people, the negative side effects don’t end when they stop taking the medications and for others, the damage has been done. 

That brings us to Juanita Gantt. Again, I read every news story I could find about her situation. I also found information about her lawsuit, which says it was filed in May of 2024, but could not find the entire filing. She told multiple outlets that she was prescribed Wegovy (Semaglutide for weight loss) and then Ozempic (Semaglutide for Type 2 Diabetes) because she is higher-weight and has a family history of Type 2 Diabetes (she, herself, did not have T2D based on all the interviews I read.)

It’s interesting that she was prescribed Wegovy and then Ozempic since Ozempic only goes up to 2mg and Wegovy’s recommended dose is 2.4mg. I imagine it may have had something to do with the Wegovy shortage (and it should be noted that people who take the medication for type 2 diabetes have pointed out that off-label prescriptions for weight loss meant/mean that people who take Ozempic for Type 2 Diabetes, many of whom can’t switch to another drug and have the same efficacy, lost access to their medication.) 

Gantt explains that her husband found her unconscious on the floor. She learned that sections of her large intestine had died and had to be amputated, leaving her with an ostomy bag (a bag that collects fecal matter outside of the body.) She also experienced a cardiac arrest while recovering from surgery. 

In the CBS News Story “Weight loss drugs allegedly landed this woman in the hospital, prompting lawsuit about drug label warnings” by Anna Werner and Sara Moniuszko, Gantt attorney Parvin Aminolroaya, stated that:

“[Novo Nordisk] put a lot of resources into marketing the drug, hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the market get new patients for the drug, but it hasn't spent that money on warning patients of the risk of gastroparesis, ileus, small bowel obstruction, and the fact that these injuries can be severe, even if it's in a rare case,"

An important part of her point here, I think, is that as Novo and Eli Lilly work hard to expand the market to as many people as possible to drive profit (including  ever younger, older, and thinner people,) rare events are going to happen to more people. 

In the same article, Gantt said that she wanted people to know:

"It just should not have happened to me. If it happened to me, it could happen to you,"

That prompted me to fire up FAERS (the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System) which allows the public to get information about adverse events that are reported to the FDA, including searching by medication. 

There are important limitations that are disclosed on the dashboard page including that duplicates and incomplete reports can exist, a report doesn’t establish causation, the reports are not verified, and rate of occurrence cannot be established by reports. 

I’ll also add that this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, there may have been adverse events that were not reported. 

That said, I ran a quick search for Semaglutide and Tirzepatide

Remember that Ozempic (the type 2 diabetes injection) was approved in Dec, 2017, Rybelsus (the type 2 diabetes pill) was approved September, 2019, and Wegovy (the weight loss application) was approved June, 2021

The website also breaks down the events by seriousness

I noticed that despite having five fewer years on the market, Tirzepatide has over 8,000 more reports. (Mounjaro, the type 2 diabetes application was approved May, 2020and Zepbound, the weight loss application, was approved November, 2023.) 

Here I noticed that despite having about 8,000 more total reports, there are 10,625 fewer serious cases and 313 fewer deaths than for Semaglutide.

Again, these data have significant limitations. What we do know is that we have no idea what these numbers will look like as more patients are put on these high doses for extended periods of time for weight loss (assuming they can tolerate the drugs that long.) 

Now, as I said in part one, there are many drugs that have rare severe side effects. That doesn’t mean that these drugs aren’t solid type 2 diabetes drugs, it means that patients deserve to fully understand the risks and benefits.

I continue to feel like these drugs are just the next in a long line of losers, some of which fell out of favor, and some of which had to be pulled from the market to force their manufacturers to stop harming and killing higher-weight people in the name of weight loss and profit. My fear around these drugs is that their slick marketing campaigns and curiously well-funded so-called “patient advocacy” groups are conditioning the healthcare system and the public to accept that it’s worth harming and killing some fat people to make others a bit thinner. Combine that with the history of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly allowing people to die so that the companies could increase their profits on insulin, and we have a very dangerous combination. I think it’s critical that we maintain vigilance around these drugs and the companies doing everything they can to profit off them.

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*Note on language: I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, I use “ob*se” and “overw*ight” to acknowledge that these are terms that were created to medicalize and pathologize fat bodies, with roots in racism and specifically anti-Blackness. Please read Sabrina Strings: Fearing the Black Body – the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and Da’Shaun Harrison: Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness for more on this.