Sir Chris Witty blasts overweight Britain’s fats jab tradition as ‘socially unacceptable’
Weight loss jabs are not the solution to Britain’s obesity crisis, the country’s most senior doctor has warned – appearing to break ranks with the Government’s push to expand access to the blockbuster injections.
England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty said it would represent a ‘societal failure’ if drugs such as Mounjaro and Wegovy were relied upon to tackle rising obesity rates, warning there is still ‘a lot we don’t know’ about the long-term effects of the treatments.
He said: ‘They are very good drugs but there’s a lot we don’t know about GLP-1s. Very small numbers of people have very bad reactions to them and a large number of people have unpleasant side effects.
‘For people who need them they are transformational, and some people will always need them, but it should be a small minority. If it’s a high proportion of people then I think that is a societal failure.
‘Relying on these drugs seems to me to be the wrong answer.’
His comments appear to diverge from the Government’s increasingly enthusiastic embrace of the medications.
Just last week Health Secretary Wes Streeting – who has called the drugs a ‘gamechanger’ – said he would pay GPs extra to roll out slimming injections faster.
Meanwhile the former medical director at NHS England, Professor Sir Stephen Powis, has predicted they could one day be prescribed as widely as statins – the most commonly used drugs in Britain.
England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty said it would represent a ‘societal failure’ if drugs such as Mounjaro and Wegovy were relied upon to tackle rising obesity rates
Speaking in London on Thursday night, Professor Whitty said: ‘I am really worried about obesity.
‘It drives multiple diseases including several cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
‘Making sure that obesity doesn’t happen in the first place is overwhelmingly better than allowing rates to go up in children and young adults and then sticking them on GLP-1 agonists at the age of 18.’
Two out of every three adults in the UK are overweight, including 30 per cent who are obese.
It is estimated that 1.6 million people in the country have tried weight loss drugs in the past year.
Professor Whitty also hit out at the way children are targeted with ‘pretty aggressive marketing’ of junk food, which he said drives obesity and leaves the health service ‘having to pick up the pieces for the rest of that child’s life’.
He said the food available on high streets in places like Wigan or Blackpool was ‘completely different’ to equivalent towns in France and it was not the fault of people living there when presented with ‘wall to wall’ junk food.
‘That is a societal choice and is one that I think we should be looking at really, very seriously.’
