I'm a GP - weight loss jabs will BANKRUPT the NHS and YOU will pick up the bill - Renee Hoenderkamp

In 2018, we were warned that women of childbearing age shouldn’t use it due to severe foetal abnormalities, and now, in 2024, we have been warned that this may also affect the sperm of men taking it, and they must be advised not to conceive within three months of stopping it!

Data emerges over decades and often long after something is deemed safe by all authorities.

As far as safety is concerned with the obesity jobs, we just don’t have the data on using them at the doses used for obesity and often in non-diabetic patients.

There are already some worrying safety signals that include pancreatitis (2.3/100 users), and this increases the risk for pancreatic cancer for three years after.

The mice on it got thyroid cancer. These are things that may not show themselves for decades, and then it's too late. The majority of users get diarrhoea, nausea and abdominal pain.

There are now reports of depression, lack of enjoyment of life, and even psychosis. And there are many more known and not unknown side effects.

Even if you get past all of that, it’s a drug for life because when you stop, the hunger comes roaring back, so these are lifelong patients of the NHS and big pharma. What could go wrong?

There is no doubt that obesity is a major problem and one only needs to go back a few decades to see that something drastic has changed and it can’t just be people eating too much.

The big change has been ultra-processed foods and trans fats. So, we need to go back to the root of the problem and tackle it there, not put a sticky plaster over it with an expensive pharmaceutical solution that will make big pharma a lot of profit.

Let's ban trans fats in food, let's make the companies killing us with their foods pay for treatment and education programs and tax them extortionately.

Why do they make a profit, and the taxpayer has to pick up the bill? Let's use the money to fund the introduction of nutrition and cooking in schools from reception onwards and run adult classes to teach people the skills they didn’t get as home economics was phased out. Let's teach them about UPF and how it is causing disease and making them fat.

Ultimately, whilst I don’t normally go in for banning things, this is the biggest healthcare issue that we face as a nation, and if we go the route of least resistance and allow the big drug companies to fix the problems created by the big food companies, the NHS will go bankrupt, and the taxpayer will face paying more and more but getting less and less of the usual treatment that the NHS was created for.

And how frustrating is it to have worked hard and taken responsibility for one's health through diet and exercise to be bankrupted by those who didn’t quite manage it?

And here is the personal responsibility bit: the jab works by reducing appetite, so you eat less and lose weight. So, take out the first bit, and we come back to the basic fact that if you eat less, you lose weight.

Yes, it's hard, I know that. I work with patients every day, but patients quite routinely underestimate what they eat and how much. They rarely try to ignore hunger or take a different route to the usual comfort food, which is undoubtedly very hard. But doing it and losing weight is a win for long-term health and living long healthily.

I see too many patients who are living long lives, held together by medication, obese and miserable. We need to start with the toddlers and help people to help themselves.

I welcome NICE rationing the drug, but I don’t think they went far enough. I think it should be limited to people with a BMI of at least 40 if not 45.

There does come a point whereby it gets almost impossible to move more, and the health risks are huge, so perhaps, although I am still on the fence, there is room for these patients. However, it's still not tackling the root cause - that should be the focus.