Just scrolled through some physician-focused subreddit discussions of GLP-1 drugs (e.g., #Ozempic). If you want to see anti-science biases driven by subculture norms...
Science is very clear about the effectiveness of behavioral #weightLoss treatments: It's absolutely awful. So low nobody should invest in any of them. If those success rates were applied to other medical issues, we'd be almost as angry about weight loss programs as we are about "pray the gay away" camps (not quite that angry... but close). There's also (IIRC) at least a little research on the standard MD "intervention" of just telling patients they need to eat less and exercise more (spoiler: even less effective than Weight Watchers).
The only treatments for being overweight with more than inconsistent and minimal success are surgery and drugs. That's it.
Now look at what MDs say to each other. They discuss how "unethical" it is to prescribe GLP-1 drugs for people who haven't shown behavioral evidence of "commitment" or "seriousness" about weight loss by following a strict diet/exercise regimen for a specific time period (usually a year or more, from what I've seen). So much patting each other on the back about the highly responsible action of refusing GLP-1 meds to people who either aren't overweight enough (i.e., they experience many health and other consequences, but the MD has a BMI line in their head the patient hasn't crossed, yet) or haven't done enough exercise or diet to convince the specific MD that they deserve the medications.
Please think about how ridiculous this is: thousands (or millions?) of medical professionals refusing to give tens or hundreds of millions of people a treatment that works until those people grind away at a treatment that doesn't work for a certain amount of time.
In case someone is going to show up and tell me "it's calories in/calories out!" Yes, of course it is. If it's so simple, why are literally billions of people struggling with that equation every day? You might as well tell people suffering from depression "it's just getting regular exercise, social interaction, and satisfying experiences every day" or someone with ADHD "It's just a matter of focusing more." Medical doctors might as well refuse to provide statins etc. to people with high blood pressure unless they show evidence of strict diet and exercise adherence for a year, first. Actually, that's not far from what they are saying with GLP-1s, and of course there are even some MDs who refuse to provide treatment for depression or ADHD until the people with those conditions "prove" they can beat the condition without any treatment.
The behavior is the problem: motivation is in your brain, which gets hijacked by fat cells and, basically, a million years of evolution. Sure, if you ignore behavior it's easy to solve behavioral issues. Everyone seems to recognize this until the behavioral issue gets too close to some programming from their childhood that touches issues of morality, responsibility, deservingness, goodness, etc. Then the science and rationality go out the window, except as a thin fig leaf for personal biases.
#bias #prejudice #fat #overweight #weightloss #glp1 #MD
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