Yoho preface:

This interview was recorded approximately a year ago, but nearly every word remains valuable. Since then, the predictions made have proven disturbingly accurate. Ozempic has been approved for expanded use and is now widely reimbursed by insurance companies.

The pharmaceutical industry has created a system where every major institution—medical schools, research organizations, professional societies, media, and even civil rights groups—profits when Americans get sick and stay sick. These companies pay doctors directly to prescribe their products, fund the research that claims their drugs work, control the medical education that teaches doctors what to prescribe, and buy off the news media that should be investigating these practices.

The result is that 80 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, rates of diabetes and prediabetes continue to climb, and the proposed solution is a drug that costs $20,000 per year, must be taken for life, causes severe gastrointestinal problems in many patients, and doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. The fact that this drug was fast-tracked for government funding while metabolic disease continues to worsen reveals the moral bankruptcy of the system.

With grateful thanks to Tucker Carlson and Mr. Means, here is their interview. It was edited for readability.

Obesity is not an Ozempic deficiency. This simple fact exposes the fundamental corruption at the heart of the pharmaceutical industry’s latest blockbuster drug. When 80 percent of American adults are overweight or obese due to environmental factors—subsidized junk food, corrupted dietary guidelines, and a food system designed to addict—the answer is not a $20,000-per-year injectable drug that must be taken for life.

Yet that is precisely the solution the pharmaceutical industry has sold to America. Through systematic manipulation of medical research, regulatory capture, and direct payments to doctors and institutions, drug manufacturers have positioned Ozempic and similar GLP-1 drugs to become the most expensive medical intervention in U.S. history. The predictions made when this strategy began have proven disturbingly accurate. The drug received expanded approval, widespread insurance reimbursement, and government funding. Lawsuits over severe side effects have materialized. The corruption has continued. And obesity rates keep climbing—because the system profits from managing disease, not curing it.

If you clean a dirty fish tank, you clean the tank—you don’t drug the fish. In America, the tank is filthy. Fifty percent of teens and 80 percent of adults are overweight. This happened in one generation. Americans didn’t systematically become lazier over the past 40 years. Something in the environment changed.

The Medical Problems

Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that makes Ozempic, surpassed LVMH to become the most valuable company in Europe. European regulators do not allow Ozempic as a first-line treatment for obesity, so almost all of its revenue comes from exploiting the broken U.S. healthcare system, as American insurance companies now widely reimburse for it.

The drug works by paralyzing the stomach, preventing proper digestion. This mechanism causes severe gastrointestinal problems in many patients. Nearly 3,000 lawsuits have been consolidated in the Pennsylvania federal court alleging gastroparesis, intestinal blockages, and ileus. The FDA has updated Ozempic’s warning label multiple times since 2023—adding warnings for ileus in September 2023, severe gastrointestinal reactions in January 2025, and pulmonary aspiration during anesthesia in November 2024.

Even patients who receive the drug for free through insurance coverage cannot tolerate it. 30% discontinue use within 3 months despite full reimbursement. The gastrointestinal side effects are that severe. Those who stop the drug regain the weight—a fact Novo Nordisk acknowledges. The company markets Ozempic as a lifetime drug precisely because patients regain weight after stopping. This creates the perfect business model: a drug that never cures the condition it treats, ensuring permanent revenue.

Vision loss is one of the most serious complications. Multiple studies published in 2024 and 2025 link semaglutide use to non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), a condition causing irreversible blindness. Patients with obesity taking semaglutide for weight loss face more than seven times the risk of developing high rates of NAION compared to those not using the drug. Diabetic patients on semaglutide face four times the risk. The World Health Organization issued a warning about this in June 2025. Hundreds of patients have filed lawsuits claiming permanent vision loss from these drugs.

The European Union launched an investigation into suicidal ideation caused by Ozempic. This connection is not surprising. Ninety-five percent of serotonin, which regulates mood and contentment, is made in the gut. A drug that paralyzes gut function disrupts serotonin production. When you interfere with the gut and serotonin simultaneously, mental health problems follow. Reports of increased depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts from Ozempic users continue to accumulate.

Research published in January 2025 revealed additional side effects beyond gastrointestinal and vision problems: kidney stones, arthritis, fainting, and drug-induced pancreatitis. Nearly 40 percent of hypoglycemia cases and 15 percent of gastrointestinal cases required hospitalization. Studies have also linked GLP-1 drugs to reduced bone density when used without exercise, raising concerns about long-term musculoskeletal damage. An aging population taking a medication that weakens bones while simultaneously causing balance problems from blood sugar fluctuations represents a fracture epidemic waiting to happen.

Patients suffer severe side effects. Many cannot continue taking the drug. Those who stop regain the weight. The drug does not address why Americans got fat in the first place. It manages a symptom at astronomical cost while the underlying dysfunction continues.

How the Corruption Works

The pharmaceutical industry has refined a systematic approach to corrupting medicine over the course of decades. This playbook operates at multiple levels, involving doctors, researchers, medical societies, civil rights groups, and media organizations. Understanding this system is essential to understanding how Ozempic became the preferred solution to obesity despite its problems.

Pharmaceutical companies pay doctors directly to prescribe their drugs. Studies show that 94 percent of physicians have some relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. These relationships include payments for continuing medical education, speaking fees, consulting arrangements, and research grants. The payments influence prescribing behavior without making doctors feel bought. The industry frames these payments as compensation for expertise, not bribes. Research demonstrates that physicians who receive industry payments are two to three times more likely to prescribe name-brand drugs than their peers who don’t receive payments.

Beyond individual doctors, companies engage in “ghost management” of medical research. In this process, company representatives design studies, collect data, analyze results, and write research papers. They then pay prominent academic physicians to add their names as authors. Industry-sponsored research masquerades as independent academic work, borrowing the (supposed) legitimacy of medical science while serving corporate interests. When studies are funded by the company that sells the drug, the outcomes are substantially more favorable for that drug than in trials run by independent researchers. This systematic bias doesn’t come from poor methodology that traditional quality measures would catch—it comes from the funding itself.

Pharmaceutical companies fund the majority of continuing medical education for doctors, which is required to maintain medical licenses. By controlling this education, companies introduce bias toward their products while maintaining the facade of objective medical instruction. Studies of company-funded educational sessions consistently show bias toward the sponsor’s products.

Professional medical societies, which have statutory authority to set standards of care, receive substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies. The organizations that determine which drugs doctors should prescribe are funded by the companies that profit from those drugs. This obvious conflict of interest goes unaddressed because the arrangement is so pervasive that it’s considered normal.

Novo Nordisk is the largest spender on foundational obesity research, the largest funder to medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, and one of the largest funders of civil rights groups. The company paid the NAACP to frame opposition to Ozempic funding as a civil rights issue, and the NAACP is now a registered lobbyist for Ozempic. It argues that not supporting government funding is racist because obesity disproportionately affects specific communities. When a pharmaceutical company can pay civil rights organizations to accuse critics of racism, the corruption has reached a new state of depravity.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended Ozempic as a first-line treatment for obese teens based on a 68-week study. This study led the AAP to recommend that every obese or overweight teen—50 percent of American teenagers—receive weekly injections for life. The study duration was just over one year. No long-term safety data existed, yet the medical establishment recommended universal adoption.

Pharmaceutical companies are the largest spenders on television news advertising—approximately $4.8 billion per year on direct-to-consumer advertising alone. This spending does not primarily aim to convince consumers to request drugs from their doctors; it is bribery for the networks. Media outlets that depend on pharma advertising dollars do not investigate pharmaceutical industry practices or report critically on new drugs. When 50 percent of television news funding comes from pharmaceutical companies, journalists do not ask hard questions about those companies’ products.

Dr. Fatima Stanford, head of obesity research at Harvard, has received tens of thousands of dollars in direct funding from Novo Nordisk, as well as millions in research grants. She appears regularly on major media outlets—including CBS’s 60 Minutes—advocating for Ozempic without disclosing these payments to viewers. On 60 Minutes, she stated that people should “throw willpower out the window” because obesity is a brain disease, not a food problem. She told viewers to take Ozempic and not worry about what they eat.

The NIH awarded 8,000 research grants to university professors who had direct conflicts of interest with the topics and drugs they were studying. This practice isn’t discussed because it’s so universal that it’s considered normal. These grants compromise NIH’s entire research program.

The opioid crisis is the template for this corruption. In 2012, a panel of outside experts convened to recommend guidance on opioids. The head of that panel was Dr. Philip Pizzo, dean of Stanford Medical School. At the time of his appointment, Stanford received a $3 million grant from Pfizer, a major opioid maker, for pain research. Dr. Pizzo appointed 90 percent of the panel members, who also received direct research and personal consulting fees from opioid makers. They released relaxed “non addictive” opioid standards that had a major impact on the opioid epidemic. This exact pattern—conflicted panel members making recommendations that benefit the companies paying them—is now repeating with obesity drugs.

Major pharmaceutical companies have paid billions in criminal and civil settlements for fraud, bribery, and misleading research. GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, two of the largest vaccine makers, settled some of the biggest criminal penalties in American corporate history for bribing doctors and producing false research. Yet these companies continue to operate with minimal oversight and maintain market dominance. The fines they pay represent a cost of doing business, not a deterrent.

The Food Stamp Connection

The food industry operates the same corruption model as the pharmaceutical industry. It spends 11 times as much on foundational nutrition research as the NIH. By controlling the research, food companies generate studies that support their products while appearing to be independent science. This corrupted research then influences government dietary guidelines, medical education, and public perception of nutrition.

The USDA has thoroughly corrupted the guidelines that set nutrition standards. Food companies fund 95 percent of the members of the guideline committee. These corrupted guidelines state that a two-year-old can consume 10 percent of their diet from added sugar. Agriculture subsidies in America send more money to tobacco than to vegetables. Ninety percent of subsidies go to highly processed foods that cause obesity.

Nearly 15 percent of Americans—roughly 50 million people—depend on food stamps for nutrition. Ten percent of all food stamp funding goes to soda. That’s over $10 billion per year flowing from the federal treasury to soda companies. The United States is the only country in the world that allows food assistance dollars to purchase this, and sodas are the number one item purchased with food stamps in America.

Calley Means worked as a consultant for Coca-Cola early in his career. The company paid the NAACP and other civil rights groups to frame proposals to limit soda purchases with food stamps as racist. They rigged the debate through systematic payments to these trusted institutions. The government subsidizes the products that cause obesity, then proposes a lifetime pharmaceutical solution that costs $20,000 per year. This is the business model.

The Financial Projections

Wall Street openly celebrates this corruption. As Ozempic gained momentum, food stocks dropped, and pharma stocks surged. Analysts openly project that obesity rates will continue to increase. Novo Nordisk became the most valuable company in Europe based on growth projections that assume higher obesity rates over the next decade. The financial models underpinning pharma stocks assume Americans will get fatter and sicker.

Medical centers seeking financing for new obesity treatment facilities base their loan applications on projections of increasing obesity. The largest and most expensive buildings in American cities are new pediatric obesity and cardiology centers. If these medical centers projected declining obesity rates, they couldn’t secure financing. The entire healthcare industry profits from worsening disease rather than improving health.

Medicare now covers Ozempic for diabetes and kidney disease. In November 2024, the Trump administration announced an agreement with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to expand Medicare and Medicaid coverage of GLP-1 drugs. The manufacturers reduced prices to $245 per month in exchange for access to millions of new patients. This government funding boost was predicted years ago and has now materialized exactly as expected.

The numbers are staggering. Medicare spent $5.7 billion on GLP-1 diabetes drugs in 2022 alone. Total U.S. spending on GLP-1 drugs in 2023 reached $71.7 billion across all payers, including private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. With 80 percent of American adults overweight or obese and expanded coverage being implemented, treating tens of millions of Americans at even the reduced price of $245 per month would cost over $1 trillion per year.

That $1 trillion annual cost would manage a symptom, not address the root cause. The environmental factors causing the metabolic health crisis—subsidized processed food, food stamp programs paying for soda, corrupted dietary guidelines, and a healthcare system that profits from chronic disease management—remain entirely unaddressed. Ozempic does nothing to fix the poisoned food supply. It doesn’t reform agricultural subsidies. It doesn’t stop the government from paying people to drink soda. It manages the consequences of these policies through lifetime pharmaceutical dependency.

The COVID Comparison

The scale of this financial disaster dwarfs previous pharmaceutical interventions. Total U.S. government spending on COVID vaccines from 2020 to 2023 was approximately $30 billion for development, manufacturing, and distribution. The per-dose cost to the government was $19.50 to $39 for negotiated bulk purchases. Treatment duration was 2 to 4 doses per person. The total cost per person was $40 to $160.

Ozempic is on an entirely different scale. Total U.S. spending in 2023 alone was $71.7 billion—more than twice the entire three-year COVID vaccine program. Medicare spending on GLP-1 drugs grew from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022. Projections suggest spending could exceed $13 to $26 billion annually on Medicare alone if only 10 percent of eligible beneficiaries use these drugs. If usage increases beyond that modest 10 percent, costs will multiply accordingly.

Per patient annual cost runs $11,000 to $20,000 at list price, though the negotiated government rate is $245 per month, or roughly $3,000 per year. Treatment duration is lifelong, for patients regain the weight when they stop the drug. The total cost per person over 20 years ranges from $60,000 at the negotiated rate to $400,000 at the list price. The target population is 80 percent of American adults, roughly 200 million people.

If Ozempic receives full government funding for the 80 percent of Americans who are overweight or obese, even at the reduced price of $245 per month, annual costs would exceed $600 billion. At list prices, yearly costs could reach $1 to $2 trillion. This equals 20 to 60 times the entire COVID vaccine budget every single year, forever. The COVID vaccine program cost taxpayers roughly $100 per person, including the whole series. Ozempic would cost $3,000 to $20,000 per person per year for life. A person on Ozempic for 20 years would cost taxpayers 600 to 4,000 times more than their entire COVID vaccination series, depending on the price point.

These numbers do not include the downstream medical costs from Ozempic’s side effects: treating gastroparesis, managing vision loss, addressing mental health crises, dealing with kidney stones, treating fractures from reduced bone density, and managing the metabolic chaos when millions eventually go off the drug. The true cost will be substantially higher than the drug price alone.

The Long-Term Unknowns

The visible costs and side effects represent just the beginning. The gastroparesis, vision loss, mental health issues, and astronomical financial burden are what we can document in the first few years of widespread use, but terrifying unknowns remain.

What happens to gut microbiomes after decades of paralysis? The gut microbiome manages immune function, produces vital nutrients, and impacts mental health. Decades of pharmaceutical-induced stomach paralysis will disturb these systems in ways we can’t predict. The gut-brain axis links digestive health to cognitive well-being. Disrupting this connection over a lifetime may lead to mental and neurological effects that won’t become apparent for years.

What are the long-term neurological effects of disrupted serotonin production? Serotonin not only regulates mood; it also affects memory, learning, sleep, and appetite. Decades of disrupted serotonin signaling in the gut could influence brain development in adolescents and accelerate cognitive decline in older adults. No studies of this exist.

What are the combined effects on bone density and muscle mass in aging populations? Osteoporosis and sarcopenia already affect older Americans. Introducing a drug that worsens both conditions could lead to an epidemic of fractures and disability. The healthcare costs for treating these issues could surpass the drug costs themselves.

How will Ozempic interact with the many other medications people take? The average 65-year-old American takes seven prescription drugs. These medications interact in complex ways that are poorly understood, even without adding Ozempic into the equation. As more people develop multiple chronic conditions and take multiple drugs, these interactions become exponentially more complicated and unpredictable.

Yoho comment: Drugs are never studied together.

What happens when millions stop using the drug—whether because of cost, side effects, or supply issues—and quickly gain weight along with metabolic chaos? The rebound effect after stopping Ozempic is well-documented. Weight returns swiftly. However, we don’t know what occurs physiologically when someone cycles on and off these medications over decades. The metabolic stress from repeated weight cycling is likely worse than never taking the drug at all.

Making a population of 200 million Americans depend on a single drug class gives manufacturers extraordinary power. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly would be destroying the metabolic health of half the American population. The pharmaceutical companies would hold more sway over American health than anything else.

The ongoing pharmaceutical dependency makes it impossible to address root causes because everyone is already on medication. Once 100 million Americans depend on weekly Ozempic injections, the political will to reform the food system disappears. Why change agricultural subsidies or restrict food stamp purchases of soda when everyone is medicated? The drug becomes the accepted fix, and the real problems are never addressed.

Every major pharmaceutical disaster follows the same pattern: initial enthusiasm, widespread use, then long-term disasters. Opioids took 15 years to show their full damage. Thalidomide caused birth defects before anyone made the connection. DES led to cancer in the daughters of women who used it. Vioxx caused heart attacks after years of use. The pattern is always the same: by the time we realize the full harm, millions are already affected.

We are conducting a mass experiment on metabolic intervention with a lifetime drug that paralyzes digestive function. The five-year data is already alarming. The 20-year data does not exist. We are asking Americans to trust pharmaceutical companies that have paid billions in criminal settlements for fraud and deception. We are asking them to ignore the corrupted research, the paid doctors, the captured regulators, and the obvious conflicts of interest. We are asking them to take a drug for life based on 68-week studies.

A Different Path

The metabolic health crisis did not exist one generation ago. Environmental factors created it rapidly, which means that environmental changes can reverse it rapidly. The president could issue executive orders tomorrow that would fundamentally change the landscape without spending a dollar.

The FDA could ban pharmaceutical advertising on television news, which no other developed country allows. This advertising does not influence consumers—it is used to bribe the news media. Eliminating this spending would remove part of the financial leverage that prevents critical reporting. Journalists could investigate pharmaceutical companies without risking their employers’ revenue. The policy would cost nothing and would immediately improve the information environment.

The NIH could stop giving research grants to investigators with conflicts of interest. This seems like common sense, but it would trigger screams of being anti-science from the corrupt establishment. 8,000 NIH grants go to conflicted researchers.

Agricultural subsidies would ideally shift from processed foods to vegetables. The government spends more on tobacco subsidies now than on vegetable subsidies, and ninety percent of agricultural subsidies go to highly processed foods. Redirecting even a small share of these subsidies to fruits and vegetables could change the economics of farming and make healthy food more affordable than junk food.

The revolving door between academia and industry has turned medical schools into research-and-development labs for pharmaceutical companies. Requiring disclosure and restricting financial ties would help restore some independence to academic medicine.

Medical groups with statutory authority to set standards of care—the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association—must be prohibited from taking pharmaceutical funding. These organizations determine which drugs doctors prescribe. They should not be funded by companies that profit from those prescriptions.

Americans respond to incentives. The healthcare system could reimburse doctors for prescribing exercise and nutrition interventions instead of drugs. These interventions are proven to reverse metabolic dysfunction. Changing the reimbursement policy would immediately change behavior.

A child with prediabetes often has obesity, hypertension, and heart problems. That child becomes a lifelong customer for multiple drugs, none of which cure anything. One medication leads to another as side effects cause new conditions, requiring more prescriptions. This corruption wastes human potential and strains the federal budget. Healthcare is the largest and fastest-growing industry in America. If trends continue, it will be 40 percent of the federal budget in 15 years. As costs rise, health outcomes get worse. This is unsustainable.

The Verdict

Everything predicted about Ozempic has come true. The drug received expanded approval and government funding. Lawsuits over severe gastrointestinal injuries appeared. Cases of vision loss surfaced. Mental health problems emerged. The corruption continued exactly as expected. Stocks rose on Wall Street. Obesity rates keep climbing, and the healthcare system profits from managing disease rather than creating health.

We are watching a pharmaceutical disaster unfold in real time with full knowledge of how it will end. The pattern has been repeated many times before.

Selected References

1. Calley Means’ website: calleymeans.com

2. Novo Nordisk financial reports and investor presentations documenting U.S. revenue concentration and obesity growth projections, available at novonordisk.com/investors.

3. Multiple studies linking semaglutide to non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), including research published in JAMA Ophthalmology and other peer-reviewed journals in 2024-2025 showing 4-7 times increased risk.

4. FDA label updates for Ozempic documenting warnings for ileus (September 2023), severe gastrointestinal reactions (January 2025), and pulmonary aspiration during anesthesia (November 2024), available at accessdata.fda.gov.

5. Consolidated multidistrict litigation in Pennsylvania federal court (MDL No. 3:24-md-03094) documenting nearly 3,000 lawsuits alleging severe gastrointestinal injuries including gastroparesis from GLP-1 drugs.

6. Sismondo, Sergio. “Epistemic Corruption, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Body of Medical Science.” Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 2021, documenting ghost management of research and systematic bias in industry-funded studies.

7. Medicare spending data showing GLP-1 drug expenditures growing from $57 million (2018) to $5.7 billion (2022), with total U.S. spending reaching $71.7 billion in 2023, available through CMS and industry analyst reports.

8. USDA agricultural subsidy data and food stamp spending patterns, including documentation that 10 percent of SNAP funding ($10+ billion annually) goes to soda purchases, the highest single category.

9. European Medicines Agency regulatory decisions on GLP-1 drugs for obesity treatment and European Union investigation into suicidal ideation associated with Ozempic use, launched in 2023.

10. American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation for GLP-1 drugs as first-line treatment for obese teens based on 68-week studies, along with documentation of Novo Nordisk funding to the AAP and other medical societies.

11. Historical case studies of pharmaceutical fraud settlements, including GlaxoSmithKline’s $3 billion settlement (2012) and Merck’s $950 million settlement (2011) for bribing doctors and producing misleading research, representing some of the largest criminal penalties in U.S. corporate history.

Yoho wrapup:

As of December 2025, nearly 3,000 lawsuits have been filed and consolidated into multidistrict litigation in the Pennsylvania federal court. These lawsuits allege serious gastrointestinal injuries, including gastroparesis, intestinal blockages, and ileus. The FDA has updated Ozempic’s warning label multiple times since this interview—adding warnings for ileus in September 2023, severe gastrointestinal adverse reactions in January 2025, and pulmonary aspiration during anesthesia in November 2024.

Multiple studies published in 2024 and 2025 have linked semaglutide use to irreversible blindness caused by non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION). The World Health Organization issued a warning about this risk in June 2025. Hundreds of patients with it have filed lawsuits.

Research published in January 2025 revealed additional concerning side effects beyond what was discussed in this interview. The study found increased risks of kidney stones, arthritis, fainting, and drug-induced pancreatitis in patients using GLP-1 drugs. Nearly 40 percent of hypoglycemia cases and 15 percent of gastrointestinal cases required hospitalization. Studies have also linked GLP-1 drugs to reduced bone density when used without exercise, raising concerns about long-term musculoskeletal health.

The prediction that this would become “the highest-funded drug from the US taxpayer in history” is also coming true. We’re conducting a mass experiment on metabolic intervention with a lifetime drug that paralyzes digestive function. The 5-year data is already alarming; the 20-year data doesn’t exist.

Leave a comment

I will never use paywalls, but if you want to help me, I offer competitively priced affiliate products HERE that I have personally tested and used. There is a new entry for grass-fed beef.