You know, the number of times I’ve had to write this out and explain it (most frequently on Reddit) is kind of annoying, but I do it as a service to the community. So here’s the short version:
A company discovers a miracle weight loss drug. The industrialized world is obese. So this seems like a pretty good product to have. Even if you focus on just the United States you’ve got yourself a drug that could be used by millions, which means tens of billions a year in revenue. What in the world would make you scrap that drug?
No other pharma company—and there are literally thousands of them—has bothered to pick it up and study it further. There is a reason for this.
When drug research is halted midway through clinical trials it is usually because it is deemed too dangerous to continue. It’s why they run concurrent animal safety tests while also running human phases. This drug was deemed too dangerous. The studies were halted immediately when animal tests revealed rapid cancer growth. There’s a reason they do that. The lifespan of a mouse is a lot shorter than a human. They make good test subjects because you can track the effects of a drug over a significant percentage of their life without waiting decades. Instead you can see how a drug changes them over the course of a few months. So a human may take a decade to grow a tumor while a mouse might do it in a month.
Take a look at how many drugs with questionable safety profiles have made it to market over the last two decades. It’s not very many, but there are a few. Vioxx is a good example. There’s a reason the FDA doesn’t approve drugs with cancer risks. It’s actually sort of obvious. So ask yourself why the grey market supplement makers are the ones you’re trusting vs the FDA and GSK. Dylan Gemelli has a vested interest in selling you his drugs. Why would you trust him instead of trusting that the people at GSK made the right call? The big pharma companies have all chosen to pass on this potential blockbuster drug that would bring them untold riches because it’s unsafe. If that doesn’t give you an idea of how much risk there was in that compound then I cannot imagine what would change your mind.
