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Oh no, a new drug might stop fat people and smokers suffering as they deserve! This example of socialist priorities comes from “economic justice campaigner” Richard J Murphy:
Richard Murphy
@RichardJMurphy
Tackling obesity and all its related issues via an injection, instead of dealing with the cause, would be like saying: “Don’t worry about smoking; just take this anti-cancer drug”.
12:47 PM · Oct 15, 2024
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Mr Richard J Murphy’s card has been, and continues to be, well and truly marked by Tim Worstall on his entertaining blog. Suffice it to be aware that Mr Murphy is a deeply unpleasant man. Let us hear no more of this turd.
Richard Murphy appears to enjoy the idea of people suffering and dying – as some sort of punishment for supposedly sinful behaviour.
Tackling obesity and all its related issues via an injection, instead of dealing with the cause, would be like saying: “Don’t worry about sepsis; just take this antibiotic drug”.
Old Glyn is right, Tim Worstall has been exposing this numb-nuts for donkey’s years.
I wonder what his opinion is of treating diabetics with insulin?
KJP,
Absolutely! Except he’d wriggle around and that one and change the issue to what drug companies charge for it.
I wonder how he’d react to a genetic treatment for obesity?
I can’t imagine he’d be happy with that “root cause” approach (because he’s giving hippie naturalistic-fallacy vibes).
I think he despises their insolence!
… I will not apologize for art.
I don’t know on this one. Remember, Ozempic is not a one-shot cure – you can lose weight on it, but you pretty much have to stay on it or you’ll go back to where you were. And weight (and type 2 diabetes in all likelihood) is problem that (at a national level at least) is the result of the last 50 years of disastrous nutritional guidance by corrupt public health organizations. Ozempic may be the only way to treat people whose bodies are already ruined, but that doesn’t invalidate the claim that we would be better off all around if we could just eliminate the need for it in 90+% of the obese population by unwinding the disastrous changes in the American diet.
Really, I’d expect a libertarian site to be a bit more skeptical of a big business/big government solution to a problem that is likely a creation of a corrupt alliance between government and corporate agriculture in the first place.
Financial Disclaimer – I have a sizable position in Eli Lilly which has become considerably more sizeable over the last year or so due to the potential sales of their products into this market. I have no problem with drugs per se, but the existence of a drug that can treat a problem doesn’t mean there isn’t a better solution available.
I’m confused. Is Murphy actually suggesting that we shouldn’t let smokers take anti-cancer drugs?
Some years ago, I once encountered a very “progressive” person who seriously believed that the NHS should withhold healthcare to smokers and the overweight because they had made poor lifestyle decisions.
I asked her if she felt gay men with AIDS should be denied healthcare too, based on their lifestyle decisions.
Crickets.
I understand the sentiment of the OP, but I think it is oversimplifying. There are some drugs that are completely curative but many of these sorts of chronic conditions are helped by a drug, not repaired entirely. Plus drugs have side effects sometimes terrible side effects (ask around about young boys taking the Covid Vaccine.)
So it is definitely better to stop smoking than it is to take a drug that reduces (or even eliminates) the lung cancer risk of the drug, because smoking has a lot of other very deleterious effects.
Ozempic, which I guess is what this is really about, is not at all a cure for obesity. It is a appetite suppressant. So it helps but doesn’t solve the problem. Plus if a person has food management issues then being overweight is not the only issue (though it is surely a big one), the damage poor diet does goes far beyond the measure of your waistline.
So for sure if there was a drug that completely cured all the consequences of smoking or obesity then its all good. But no such drug exists or is likely to exist in the next fifty years. And the promise of “keep smoking this’ll fix your problem” or “ozempic will fix your weight problems” is a message given to desperate people who really do need lifestyle changes along with pharmaceutical support when appropriate. It is like finding someone in the middle of the ocean and giving them inflatable water wings. Sure it helps but it doesn’t solve the basic problem.
Screw “solve the basic problem”. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Vaping is less harmful than cigarettes, both to the people using and the people surrounding. But it, too, must be suppressed! As for the overweight, all they have to do is eat less and exercise more. Don’t let them take the easy way out. Those crutches you’re using for your broken leg? They may be okay, but I’m watching you.
To those who are worried about the deleterious effects of cigarette smoking, I recommend cigar smoking as an extremely effective, sustainable and acceptable alternative.
Agree with Ellen.
That said, I do hope patients are repeatedly and fully informed about the risks, which can be life changing. It is all about risk/benefit. GLP agonists have been available for almost 20 years for T2D, so they have a track record. I would think they would be a useful way to retrain the brain, a bridge to better choices, by suppressing cravings. This function may work on other addictions, even behavioral ones.
It isn’t about virtue or punishment.
Is the issue, who pays for these interventions? How much is it on your side of the Atlantic. The cost is often prohibitive in the USA.
Ozempic is more than an appetite suppressant. ACX has a good article on what it does – its more a ‘willpower enhancer’ that allows far more than merely suppressing appetites.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-does-ozempic-cure-all-diseases
I assume Mr Murphy will be further upset by recent reports of a potential pill that is said to have the same biochemical effect as a 10,000-metre run.
Why should you be expected masochistically to exhaust yourself and maybe sprain something if the same effect can be gained from the comfort of your sofa? I thought we were past the theological dark ages when suffering was considered virtuous in itself?
phwest: “Remember, Ozempic is not a one-shot cure – you can lose weight on it, but you pretty much have to stay on it or you’ll go back to where you were.”
Dieting and exercise are not one-shot cures either – you can lose weight on them[1], but you pretty much have to stay on them or you’ll go back to where you were.
[1]Provided you can tolerate the side-effects. Which is true both of Ozempic and diet & exercise.
I speculate how the economic justice campaigner would respond to the moral philosophy thought-experiment I hawked around my tutors thirty years ago on the question of criminal justice. In it I posited several distinct intentions behind a criminal sentence, all of which for justice to be served had to be present as necessary conditions:
1. Prevention – locking ‘em up keeps ‘em from repeat offending, and the worse the offence the longer you lock ‘em up for
2. Rehabilitation – teach ‘em to be a better person – in a harsh, or a liberal custodial régime matters not* so long as rehabilitation is effective
3. Restitution – the victim sees that justice is done
As these 3 stood, I felt there was something missing, and something to do with the liberality of the rehabilitation programme, whereby it was entirely possible to imagine an unreasonably liberal (for want of a better word) one. If, I argued, the young scumbag who keeps robbing people and businesses gets a rehabilitation programme which treats him to a balloon safari rather than to a short, sharp shock, there is some element of justice lacking even if the balloon safari does the trick, and the young scrote returns a changed man, permanently improved.
What I argued for aged 21 was a final, fourth intention:
4. The sentence had to hurt – bad must be visited on bad, or justice will not be satisfied. Distinct from 3., this showed that wider society was also the victim of the crime, even if not directly affected. I was a crueller 21 year-old, and certainly one more certain of himself, than I think I am now.
My guess is that Richard Murphy would see the successful balloon safari as money unarguably well spent. Ends and means, old boy. A strictly utilitarian approach. So why not drugs to cure obesity? If we could blast chemical rays into the atmosphere which reversed climate-change badness Mr Murphy would be appalled! It’s got to hurt! If it just worked, people wouldn’t change their ways! To which the final question would be: why would they have to?
We’ve all got baser instincts we must pit our better ones to fight. It takes insufferable smugness to imagine only our enemies have this battle to fight, and only our friends and ourselves to show them how.
– Don’t bother with it.
If you are overweight or fat, and are unhappy because of it, stop cramming more food than you need through your pie hole.
Cut out the processed foods high in carbohydrates, sugars and artificial oils, ( and pies).
Introduce cream, cheese, cream cheese even, meat, eggs, fish, nuts, selected fruits and so on.
Start a regime of modest exercise, walk to the shops instead of getting everything delivered to your door.
The manufacturer of Ozempic doesn’t want you well! How will they sell you any more medications if you are well?
Oh and Richard Murphy ? He’s a pompous prat. Don’t pay any attention to him.
This is far beyond mere medical advice.
This is religion.
It’s not enough to get good results. You need to get those results through fervent acceptance of what the Right Experts are saying.
You must BELIEVE.
Vaping could save many lives – but what good are those lives if they’re not driven by proper class consciousness?
“4. The sentence had to hurt – bad must be visited on bad, or justice will not be satisfied. Distinct from 3., this showed that wider society was also the victim of the crime, even if not directly affected. I was a crueller 21 year-old, and certainly one more certain of himself, than I think I am now.”
There is another important consequence of the sentence hurting the criminal – it acts as a deterrent to others to copy him. If one discovered that free balloon safaris seemingly cured thieving scumbags, then offering them liberally would act as a great incentive for anyone who fancied such a free holiday to get busy with their crowbar. And indeed maybe to do some more thieving once the first holiday has been had, in hope of getting another, thus disproving the initial theory as well.
It may well be that ‘some’ habitual criminals would respond well to ‘nice’ treatment over harsh treatment, but that would just encourage more into a life of crime. Curing one criminal isn’t much good if you encourage 10 more to have go because the consequences seen as entirely positive for the perpetrator.
“Vaping is less harmful than cigarettes, both to the people using and the people surrounding. But it, too, must be suppressed!”
Here in Canada, the same government that made cannabis a legal product is actively against vaping.
Go figure.
You can think treatment is a viable alternative to prevention, or advocate prevention as a much better route. You can regard disease as a moral failing. You can flak for Big Pharma happy pills for everyone. Whatever.
Just don’t use the State to make others dance to your tune. Let the pill-poppers have their soma, if they want it; and back-to-nature granola-philes can tsk tsk away. Nobody gets to call their neighbors shot.
I think that is the principled libertarian position.
@bobby b – I think this is now well-beyond what we would class as a religion – a sincere belief in things not seen and not capable of proof. To me, it’s more like the ‘tabu’ social systems of the Pacific Islanders – systems of irrational, varying and incomprehensible “right” and “wrong” ways of interacting with the world, all designed to allow free rein to one of mankind’s most basic and most powerful moral compulsions, common at all times and in all places – that of passing superior moral judgement on the lives of others. The Inquisition claimed to operate on the mandate of Heaven, however irrational it might seem. But the modern Inquisition, as typified by this Murphy character, operates on an even-more-powerful mandate – the absolute conviction of one’s own righteousness over others. See Lewis, C. S.
llater,
llamas
llater,
llamas
Is it wrong that upon reading ‘balloon safari’, my first thoughts ran toward Pinochet’s free helicopter rides?
Old Glyn
I like the cut of your jib Sir. Sadly this fat bastard is an ongoing source of evil who operates without pause. The more we can expose him the better.
It’s not as if Murphy looks like he’d get through training as a SEAL or U.K. Royal Marine.
well there are no anti-cancer drugs for smoking-related cancers, primarily because his attitude won, which is that smokers should not smoke and if they do, they should just accept their problems and die quietly.
Spud was (and is) an advocate of physically restraining people and injecting them with dangerous novel drugs (AKA CV-19 “vaccine”).
Being a Leftist, he presumably has no problems with his Quaker moral position of no drugs for fatties versus the state forcibly insisting upon injections.
Sorry – this is OT, but I wonder if y’all are aware that your government is actively working in the US for Kamala’s election? As in, sending a hundred or so Labour people over to stump on her behalf.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1846875197267394585
If Trump wins, that special relationship is going to be less special.
I didn’t know, but it doesn’t surprise me.
But Republicans might take heart from the fact that Starmer didn’t win on the merits of his own election manefesto, but on the fact that the Tories were so utterly dire, that their supporters deserted them in droves.
So will the Harris campaign benefit from this ‘expertise’? I doubt it.
The special relationship is an illusion. But Trump supporters should be delighted as the Labour Party is the kiss of death 😀
Depends upon whom you ask.
On the USA right, the sentiment about England – the idea of old England, not so much its current leadership – is still strong and positive and “special.”
On the USA left, you’re all just a bunch of colonizers, and on the UK left, we’re just as bad.
So, matching up current gov to current gov, you’re correct. But there still exists that mutual fondness between the con sides. And, should the right come back in one or both places, I think the relationship will be strong and valuable.
Re-do:
“And, should the right come back in one or both places, I think the relationship will be strong and valuable.”
On reflection, it will take a reprise of conservatism on both sides to foster that relationship.
Regarding Labour Party people coming to work on the US election, that’s nothing new. Both parties in the UK have been sending their organizers to work on US Presidential elections for decades – I believe Mr Blair was particularly-keen on this approach – and they all seek to learn whatever they can about US electioneering.
The special relationship? Well, when you consider that if the titular US President gets any dumber, they’re going to have to water him twice a week, and given his long-standing and overt distaste for the UK – he claims to be Irish, you know, on days when he’s not Jewish, or Italian, or Puerto-Rican, or black, or Polish – why would any UK politician place any reliance whatever on anything the US says or does? Or, indeed, why would anybody, anywhere? The US is already proving to be a terrible friend, and a meaningless enemy, worldwide. The smartest thing anyone could do, anywhere, is to, so far as possible, ignore the US entirely.
llater,
llamas
This was my first thought, after a mild sense of outrage died out after reading about it.
I am reminded of an Arab saying that i found somewhere, more than 10 years ago:
It is better to be the Englishman’s enemy than his friend.
If you are his enemy, he will try to buy you.
If you are his friend, he will definitely sell you.
Now, i must say that that is definitely not true for all British governments.
Neither is it true for all US administration. But it is true for some of them. Compare the treatment that Gaddafi received from the Obama administration to the treatment that the ayatollahs received, for instance.
Consider also that none other than Lech Walesa said, at some point during Obama’s tenure, that you cannot rely on the US anymore.
Trump has been a more reliable ally, but too many European opinion-makers are too brain-damaged to realize it.
Congratulations to Natalie for the ironic title btw.
I must say, however, that i found that it hardly requires any willpower to lose weight without using Ozempic: You just have to follow sensible dietary advice.
By writing ‘sensible’, i implicitly exclude the advice given by the nutrition/medical establishment.
“The sentence had to hurt”
As a Gentleman With Priors, I think the meaner young Trapnel was on to something. Long before any sentence comes down, the modern offender is exquisitely tortured with probation visits, piss tests, bizarre bail conditions, and suffocating paperwork, sometimes for years. Then there’s no trial: only plea bargains, on this continent: and everyone gets a conviction. This sets off another roundelay of close inspections, intrusive little bureaucrats (almost all women, now) and of course a stain on your official rep that keeps you poor-ish forever. To say nothing of time inside, if there is any.
Any thinking criminal would prefer a miserable, humiliating ten lashes or equivalent, on Facebook or equivalent, for say a middling non-violent crime. If it were over in an hour.
Meets Trapnel’s other requirements too, I think.
The sort of people who are horrified by corporal punishment don’t know the despair of tangling with the criminal-justice Leviathan. It’s like being sat on, and lectured, by Jabba the F’cking Hutt, for years.
Hey Agammemnon,
Thanks for the link, but why does it have to be so complicated? All you had to say was “it’s gila monster venom”.
I must have this.
Agree with Bobby b post at 7:57pm, but re this “If Trump wins, that special relationship is going to be less special.”, I always think when I read such sentences that they should say “If Trump is allowed to win…”
And regarding the “special relationship”, I’ve seen it through collaboration at the “bench level” between UK universities and UK govt labs and the US DOE labs. Bobby b rightly calls out, for me anyway, why we are so motivated to collaborate.
I happen to have a nice large wall poster of the “Pub Stops of Bristol” as evidence of my fondness! The “Dot to Dot” music festival included Bristol a few years ago…highly recommended.
Why should the United States want a “Special Relationship” with a country whose government regards the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment and the Second Amendment – and the rest of it, as “Crime Think”?