, drugmaker Eli Lilly declared that it "stands against the use of its medicines for cosmetic weight loss" — even as people using the Ozempic competitors for that very purpose have made the companyThe Indianapolis-based company added that because tirzepatide has not been tested on people who have gastrointestinal disorders such as pancreatitis and gastroparesis, people who have those conditions should avoid the drug.
Though it didn't mention it by name, the specter of Denmark's Novo Nordisk, which makes the diabetes injection Ozempic and its weight loss sister drug Wegovy, hangs heavy over Lilly letter. The pharma firm cautioned that tirzepatide should not be taken by anyone under 18 and will never be advertised on social media — two issues that have become salient for Nordisk as
The rival firms' interests dovetail towards the end of the open letter, where Lilly issued a stark warning about buying and using compounded tirzepatide from"Be aware that when you purchase products that are not FDA-approved medicines or obtain medicines from an unverified source or without a prescription from a licensed healthcare provider, you may be purchasing fake, counterfeit, or otherwise unsafe products," the letter cautioned.
It's an intriguing positioning for the pharma giant. Entire fields of treatment — think botox, or lip filler, or Brazilian butt lifts — have essentially no purposeto address patients' cosmetic concerns about their bodies. Will drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide chart a different course, with their makers positioning them as strictly medical? For now, that certainly feels like Lilly's strategy.