GEAB 196

TREND

At the intersection of medicine, technology and economics, GLP-1-based anti-obesity treatments are profoundly reconfiguring our relationship with the body. Behind the promise of a miracle solution lies a society that is literally becoming increasingly ‘disembodied’, guided by virtual standards and industrial interests, at the risk of collectively overturning our eating habits and our humanity.

Until further notice, humans are embroiled in a process in which they are gradually caught up in a virtual world that is tending to replace a real world in great difficulty. Even if this does not sum up the situation in all its complexity, a “Ready player-one” society[1] is really emerging, the symptoms of which are not so much the hours that people spend in front of screens as an increasingly distorted perception by the virtual of our relationship with reality (information, nature, war, sexuality, work…).

Among the many drivers of the derealisation of the human being, anti-obesity drugs (Ozempic, Wegowy,…[2]) could go down in the history books as game-changers in the relationship between humans and their bodies and food.

Ongoing explosion in the use of GLP-1

In 2024, the WHO estimated that 43% of adults worldwide were overweight, including 16% who were obese. In the United States, 23% of young people are obese. Obesity is rising sharply in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia: +50% in 10 years[3].

In 2023, the global cost of care related to overweight and obesity is estimated at around 2,000 billion dollars per year. If current trends continue, this figure could rise to 4,320 billion dollars by 2035, or almost 3% of global GDP, an impact comparable to that of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.[4] That said, if we had to pay for GLP-1 treatments for the one billion obese people in the world today, according to the WHO[5], we would have to spend not 2,000 billion dollars but 105,000 billion dollars a year (11% of GDP), given current prices (more than 1,000 dollars a month[6])!