The drug stops working if you stop taking it? Shocking! Heart medication for hypertension also stops working if you don't take it. Sure there's a vast conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry to hook us all on drugs because we can't learn to exercise, but that's hardly Ozempic's fault. Now if you were looking at brain surgery that zaps the reward center of the brain causing permanent changes so the patient was less addicted to food, but the patient kept needing to have brain surgery, then you'd have a point, but "drug stops working if you don't take it" is hardly the gotcha some make it out to be. Insulin also stops working for diabetics if they don't take it. That's kind of medication's whole deal.

Now that we know obesity can be controlled via medication, and it'll cost $foo over the lifetime of the patient, the next step is to optimize. If there is a treatment involving ultrasonic brain surgery that costs less than $foo, the expectation is for the market to find that. Ultrasonic brain surgery is in its infancy, but it's already showing utility for Alzheimer's and addiction. The real question is if the pharma companies are going to be able to keep it from going mainstream because it's less profitable for them.