Pharma giant Eli Lily has an inspired new plan to get obese UK welfare cows back on the plantation for the betterment of society — which just coincidentally involves it selling dangerous drugs to the government for windfall profits.
“Once a heifer gets dug in, you’ll have a hell of a time digging her out, boy-o,” my Midwestern Irish-Catholic grandmammy once advised me as we walked to mass. “That’s inertia.”
I could never rightly tell when she was speaking in metaphorical or literal terms.
Via CNBC (emphasis added):
“U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is exploring whether obesity drugs could be used to curb joblessness after signing a major investment deal with the U.K.
The weight-loss treatment firm and creator of Zepbound announced Monday that it would commit £279 million ($364 million) to help tackle Britain’s significant health challenges — including obesity.
The “strategic collaboration,” agreed with the U.K.’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)* and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), came as part of a wider £63 billion package of investments announced at the close of the Labour government’s inaugural International Investment Summit on Monday…
The U.K.’s Health and Social Care Minister Wes Streeting said the partnership was “key to building a healthier society, healthier economy, and making the NHS fit for the future.”
The U.K. is battling a stubbornly high rate of “economic inactivity,” defined as those neither working nor looking for a job. Almost a third of claims are attributed to long-term sickness, including pre-existing health conditions, such as obesity, which has been exacerbated by Covid…
Streeting noted that the jabs could be “monumental” in tackling obesity and getting people back to work, but added that the “NHS can’t be expected to always pick up the tab for unhealthy lifestyles.””
*A “strategic collaboration”!
How quaint and innocuous a turn of phrase — the strategic, if you will, alternative to the more apt “merger of corporation and state,” otherwise known as “fascism.”
“Strategic what?... What is this babble?” -Christopher Hitchens
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
