text_1: Weighing effectiveness versus risk in obesity drugs
text_2: This story endeavors in a noble task: providing readers with an assessment of the landscape for obesity drugs. We wish more stories took this broad view when writing about new drug studies or approvals. The article does a good job of framing the key issues, asking, essentially, whether is there enough benefit to justify the side effects. Not often do stories address this issue, and we applaud their approach. The story comes close to achieving a balance in its attempt to answer this question. For example, the statements by Thomas and Wolfe are excellent alternative opinions to the views espoused by the obesity drug expert camp. But we wish this story had gone beyond a he said/she said look at the evidence and that it had not relied so heavily on sources that have strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry, which is pushing hard for looser restrictions on anti-obesity drug approvals. There also is some clear disease-mongering in the article, which gives it the unsavory taste while you read it. As this story notes, a third of the US adult population is obese, and the situation has only worsened in recent years, despite concerted public health efforts to address this serious public health threat. Pills, though, are just one part of the equation. From reading this story, people might believe that the only reason people are obese is because they don’t have access to the right pills. How does this explain the huge contrast between the US and other developed countries in terms of obesity? How does this explain the rapid rise in average body-mass index over the past three decades and the resulting rise in diabetes, heart disease and other health problems? The story accepts as its underlying premise that obesity would melt away if drug companies could find the right pill and that they are being scared away by the big bad FDA. Even a story that is primarily focused on the drug industry and not the root causes of obesity should have given more weight to the evidence about the health problems resulting from obesity drugs.