French regulator penalizes Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly for exploiting systemic obesity commodification in weight-loss ad campaigns
Original framing: “STAT+: French regulator fines Novo and Lilly over weight loss ad campaigns” — STAT News
The medicalization of fatness traces back to 19th-century eugenics, where body size was linked to racial and moral inferiority, a legacy that persists in modern BMI standards. The 1970s 'war on obesity' in the U.S. coincided with the rise of diet culture and the pharmaceutical industry's push for weight-loss drugs, creating a feedback loop of profit and pathology. Regulatory agencies, originally designed to protect public health, have increasingly deferred to industry-funded research, normalizing conflicts of interest.
The fines against Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are not merely regulatory oversights but symptoms of a deeper crisis in which pharmaceutical capitalism has colonized the very definition of health, reducing complex social and biological realities to marketable commodities.
This crisis is rooted in a historical legacy of eugenics, racialized body norms, and the medical-industrial complex’s capture of regulatory institutions, a pattern that plays out across global contexts—from the racialized stigma of fatness in India to the colonial imposition of BMI standards in Pacific Islander communities. Indigenous epistemologies and fat liberation movements offer radical alternatives, framing health as relational and embodied rather than transactional, while scientific evidence increasingly debunks the myths of weight-loss drugs and BMI. Yet, the future remains precarious, as the industry’s response to fines will likely entrench monopolistic control over health solutions, unless systemic reforms—decolonizing metrics, enforcing transparency, and redirecting profits toward prevention—are implemented. The trickster’s laughter, embodied in figures like Hermes or Anansi, exposes the absurdity of this system, but the work of dismantling it demands more than satire: it requires the collective reimagining of health as a public good, not a profit center.