Transcript: The year of weight loss drugs

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘The year of weight loss drugs’

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Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, December 22nd. And this is your FT News Briefing.

The Bank of England could start cutting rates next year. And weight loss drugs like Ozempic have been in the news a lot. But are we missing their true potential? 

Hannah Kuchler
They’re not just like slimming jabs, but they’re actually these really powerful preventive tools. 

Marc Filippino
Plus, we take a look at the booming fertility industry in India. I’m Marc Filippino. And here’s the news you need to start your day. 

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UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has raised the prospect of cutting interest rates in 2024. He told the FT recently that next year the country needs to throw off its pessimism about the economy — not too shocking, especially since we saw the rate of UK inflation drop to 3.9 per cent last month and interest rates in the UK are at a 15-year high. But ultimately it’s up to the Bank of England. And one of the bank’s governors said this week that uncertainty over the UK’s labour market would mean it needs to wait before it can cut rates.

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The FT has chosen Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen as Person of the Year. He’s the CEO of Novo Nordisk. Now, if neither one of those names sound familiar, the company’s leading drugs probably do — Ozempic and Wegovy. They’re game-changing treatments for obesity and were two of the most talked about medications this year. Here to discuss Jørgensen and the impact of these drugs is the FT’s global pharmaceutical editor, Hannah Kuchler. Hey, Hannah. 

Hannah Kuchler
Hi. 

Marc Filippino
All right. So tell us a little bit about Jørgensen and his role in establishing these drugs. 

Hannah Kuchler
So you’re right to say that he isn’t gonna be a household name. But I think as Ozempic and Wegovy have become household names, he’s got a really important role because these are drugs that actually have the potential really to reshape society. You know, obesity costs a huge amount to health systems. It costs a huge amount in like, missed work days. And it may be the thing that actually pushes us to think more preventively. They’re not just like slimming jabs, but they’re actually these really powerful preventive tools. They cut the risk of really serious cardiac events, and those are really expensive things for healthcare systems. So if they can pay for this drug now in order to get that benefit later, that could be really important. 

Marc Filippino
I see. So they’re looking at these drugs as a kind of preventive measure. That’s the health part of this. But how did these drugs become a cultural phenomenon? 

Hannah Kuchler
Yeah. I mean, it’s so funny because . . . so I met Jørgensen a couple of weeks ago in Copenhagen, and he is so not the guy to keep up with celebrity news. But these drugs have become really popularised by Hollywood — actually started last year when Kim Kardashian went to the Met Gala. 

Kim Kardashian voice clip
Tell everyone can see, I know the process it took to get in . . .  

Hannah Kuchler
And she slimmed down to that little Marilyn Monroe dress.

Kim Kardashian voice clip
I tried it on. It didn’t fit me. And so I looked at him and I said, give me like, three weeks. And I . . . 

Hannah Kuchler
Now she hasn’t admitted taking them. And often celebrities don’t. But now the kind of working assumption for most celebrity watchers is that so many people are on these. It became a big joke at the Oscars this year . . . 

Jimmy Kimmel voice clip
Everybody looks so great. When I look around this room, I can’t help but wonder, is Ozempic right for me? 

Hannah Kuchler
And this has obviously driven a demand in the real world. 

Marc Filippino
Yeah, there’s a lot of hype. But what are some of the criticisms or even the long-term public health impacts of these drugs? 

Hannah Kuchler
Yeah. So in the short term there’s still been huge supply constraints. Part of that is because they basically didn’t anticipate the kind of demand there was gonna be. And there have been concerns that the way that they’re being rolled out at the moment is quite unequal. It seems like celebrities can get even Ozempic, which is focused on diabetes and you’re meant to have diabetes to get. And diabetes patients sometimes struggle to do so. I think in the long term, what they’re desperate to do is make it a more equal availability. But to do that, they’re gonna have to have health insurance, cover it more widely, and they’re gonna have to have government systems that pay for healthcare, cover it more widely. And they’re experimenting with things. They’re proposing ways of sort of like, get the drug now, pay for it later when you see the benefits and all sorts of things. But it is an overhanging question like, does this continue to be so unequal? 

Marc Filippino
Yeah. You know, what does this kind of rise to fame tell us about where the pharmaceutical industry is right now? 

Hannah Kuchler
I think what I find kind of impressive and interesting is that pharma companies have in many ways become sort of engines of M&A. A lot of the time they don’t do a lot of the research in-house. They just pick up small biotechs and commercialise the products and Novo Nordisk has been working on this for like, 32 years. This is the opposite of overnight success and innovation. And so I think it shows that that’s still possible. Eli Lilly as well, one of their longtime rivals, is the only other company that’s kind of level pegging in obesity has also been developing these internally. And so that’s maybe gonna have some companies to think about their models. 

Marc Filippino
Hannah Kuchler is the FT’s global pharmaceutical editor. Thanks, Hannah. 

Hannah Kuchler
Thank you. 

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Marc Filippino
This year, India overtook China as the most populated country on the planet. But one of the more overlooked trends is that birth rates have fallen by quite a bit and fertility clinics have now become big businesses in India. This is the last part of our three-part series on the changing face of India. Today, we look at how the business of fertility has affected one family in Mumbai. Our correspondent Chloe Cornish has the report. 

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Maya
It took us like, at least 10 years to conceive. 

Chloe Cornish
That’s Maya, a 38-year-old beautician and mother to Manvi. (Child singing)

Chloe Cornish
She’s a charming three-year-old going on four, wearing a tiara. 

Maya
Are you a princess? 

Manvi
Yes. 

Chloe Cornish
Her hair is short and fuzzy as a duckling. That’s because the family is just back from a visit to a temple in south India where Manvi and her father, Sunil, had their head shaved and donated their hair. The temple is very special for the family because Manvi was conceived six months after they first visited it. Maya shows me photos from before and after. 

Maya
We try to recreate the same pictures without her and with her. So she keeps asking me, Mama, why I’m not in the picture? So that’s why we created the whole thing. So we have to tell her, you’re in my tummy when we went there. 

Chloe Cornish
Maya had to endure an agonising obstacle course of pills and poor medical advice before she became pregnant. 

Maya
The beginning, I started doing my treatment in a (inaudible) hospital, but the condition was so bad, so bad it was like, every time going to them is like, scared and, you know, shameful. Like, how are you gonna open your body in front of someone else? And they talk to you so rudely. You’re like, not human. 

Chloe Cornish
For a while, Maya stopped trying and started saving money. And while she was giving beauty treatments, her clients opened up about their own fertility struggles. 

Maya
Obviously, we talked about, a few of my clients, they went to the same doctor and I said, why not? I can also try it now. I can afford it. 

Chloe Cornish
That was how she got to know about private doctors, like Dr Kaushal Kadam. 

Maya
So I went there and spoke with the doctor. I was very comfortable. So she was very sweet, like, making me understand, this can go this way. This will happen this way. 

Chloe Cornish
When Dr Kaushal opened her clinic in Mumbai 13 years ago, most of her patients came from overseas for surrogacy. But these days, she’s busy with local clients like Maya. 

Dr Kaushal Kadam
More and more Indian patients started seeking help. And that’s the reason now, even when there are very few international patients coming in, we have a lot of Indian patients themselves who are seeking treatment from us. 

Chloe Cornish
Women in India are now having two babies on average. That’s below the level needed to replace the population. It’s a higher fertility rate than places like the US, but it’s way lower than it used to be in the 1950s. The average woman had six children. 

Dr Kaushal Kadam
When I used to hear my parents talking about this, they would be like, in India, it used to be like within a year married couples would have babies. And now the trend is changing. 

Chloe Cornish
As education and work opportunities improve, middle-class families are having fewer children and getting pregnant later in life. But because of starting out a little older and other factors like stress, many would-be parents are finding it tough to conceive.

The price of in vitro fertilisation is too much for most Indian families. Maya opted instead for intrauterine insemination, where a doctor injects sperm into the patient’s uterus. This is much more affordable at around $100 a cycle. But Maya and Sunil still had to make big sacrifices to pay for it. 

Maya
We cut down everything else, like, you know, no going on holiday, no going on for movies. (Inaudible) Nothing. 

Chloe Cornish
Couples like Maya and Sunil are far from alone. The Indian Society for Assisted Reproduction says one in six couples struggle to conceive. Dr Kaushal says business has been booming since the start of the decade. 

Dr Kaushal Kadam
When I started there were just a handful of centres, you know. And I think the boom was really the reason why we had so many clinics come up offering various services to the patients. But in a way that also helped because this created the awareness, you know, among patients. And now patients have a choice. 

Chloe Cornish
For investors, this represents a huge business opportunity. Now Indian banks are supporting the mushrooming industry, offering personal loans for fertility treatment. India’s four leading fertility groups are backed by private equity investors. It shows how keen they are to profit from the sector’s growth. Indira, India’s biggest chain of fertility centres, was valued at over $1bn when multinational private equity group EQT bought a majority stake this July.

Dr Kaushal’s clinic is at the smaller end of the industry, but she’s busy. She says she sees about 10 would-be parents per day. And in Maya, she has a very satisfied customer. 

Maya
No, I don’t have any regrets. I’m glad we did that. Very, very happy about it. 

Chloe Cornish
For the FT News Briefing, I’m Chloe Cornish. Special thanks to Jyotsna Singh for her help reporting and producing this piece. 

Marc Filippino
That is it for our series on a changing India. If you missed parts one and two, check out our episodes from December 20th and the 21st to catch up.

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You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. And, hey, we’re doing something a little bit different next week. We’ll be highlighting the shows of our awesome colleagues here at the FT. Make sure to tune in and see you everyone in 2024. 

The FT News Briefing is produced by Kasia Broussalian, Sonja Hutson, Fiona Symon and me, Marc Filippino. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. We had help this week from Joanna Kao, Josh Gabert-Doyon, Breen Turner, David da Silva, Michael Lello, Peter Barber and Gavin Kallmann. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio, and our theme song is by Metaphor Music. 

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