Risky Business Part 2: SELECT’s Dirty Little Secret
Welcome to Part 2 of Novo Nordisk's masterful marketing push to turn their weight loss drugs into cardiovascular life savers. You can read Part 1 here. We'll start with an overview of the clinical trial at the centre of Novo's PR stunt, the 'Semaglutide Effects on...
Risky Business: How Novo Nordisk’s Marketing Machine Turned Their Weight Loss Drugs Into Cardiovascular Life Savers
The weight loss industry has always been a bullshit PR machine but Novo Nordisk has created a gargantuan geyser of misinformation. In August 2023 they issued a strategic press release claiming that their weight loss drug Wegovy reduced ‘major cardiovascular events...
Channel 7’s Spotlight Special “The Ozempic Revolution”
Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines is illegal in Australia, but this hasn't stopped weight loss drug companies, who have an inglorious history of using deceptive methods to market their products. In 2002 a swathe of news stories appeared on...
Wegovy Is Coming…
It’s been quite some time since I wrote a blog - for most of this year I’ve been probing into the murky underworld of Big Pharma! This has been a HUGE sinkhole for time and emotional spoons, but alongside fabulous Fat Studies scholars Andrea Bombak & Patty Thille,...
A Psychologist Reviews The Dark Psychology of Noom
Noom are conducting an unprecedented marketing blitz, claiming to be a psychological approach to lasting weight loss, “designed by psychologists”. As a clinical psychologist who works with people impacted by dieting and eating disorders, I am witnessing both clients...
FFS It’s Not “Healthy At Any Size”
Recently I appeared on SBS’ Insight, talking about emotional eating. During the show, that old chestnut “... but can you really be healthy at any size?” was posed, and infuriatingly, my response was edited out. Instead, they asked Phillipa Hay, a psychiatrist whose...
