OPINION - The idea of using weight-loss drugs to get people back into work fills me with deep unease

There was a moment a couple of years ago, as weight-loss injections first erupted into popular consciousness, when it looked as though they couldn’t possibly endure. All right-thinking people were, it seemed, reflexively horrified by the suddenly rampant use and abuse of Ozempic and its compatriots by Hollywood elites. Disturbing side-effects, including increased risks of thyroid tumours and kidney damage were being reported, pharmaceutical companies were reporting shortages in the drugs for patients with diabetes, their originally-intended recipients. It was all “dystopian”, “a nightmare”, “like an episode of Black Mirror”. “Whatever happened to the body positivity movement?” we cried. Surely, we weren’t actually going to cross this frontier?