A new weight loss drug that has not yet been approved by regulators is being sold through a thriving black market, raising serious safety concerns in the United States. The medication, still in clinical trials, promises to curb hunger, shed fat and help users retain muscle, and demand for it has run far ahead of the approval process that is meant to keep patients safe.
Because the drug remains in clinical trials and has not been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration, it has not been deemed safe for patient use. That has not stopped it from spreading. Online it is traded under a short nickname, and it has been described in some circles as a stronger successor to the weight loss injections that have already become household names.
A CBS News investigation found that the barriers meant to keep an unapproved drug out of patients' hands are being widely ignored. Reporters identified dozens of doctors and nurses willing to test the rules, alongside some 125 medical vendors promoting access to the drug online, creating an easy pipeline for people determined to obtain it.
The investigation also found that people are already injecting the drug themselves, without the oversight of a properly regulated prescription or a controlled supply chain. That do-it-yourself approach is precisely what alarms specialists, who warn that buyers have no way of knowing what they are actually putting into their bodies.
Experts say the risks go beyond whether the drug works at all. There is no assurance of safety, no assurance that the product has been properly manufactured, and no assurance that it will deliver the results being advertised. For a medicine that is injected, those unknowns carry real consequences for anyone who decides to take the gamble.
Eli Lilly, the company developing the drug, has objected to the wave of advertisements and online posts promoting it. The firm has stated bluntly that anyone purporting to sell the product to consumers is breaking the law, drawing a clear line between its own clinical work and the unregulated market that has sprung up around the treatment.
The episode underlines how the surge of interest in weight loss medications has outpaced the safeguards built around them. As long as an unapproved drug can be marketed and shipped with little resistance, health officials face the difficult task of warning the public that a treatment available online is not the same as one a regulator has judged safe to use.