Between 2019 and 2022, the number of prescriptions for Ozempic and related weight-loss drugs increased over 2,000%, with over 5 million prescriptions filled in 2022. From their meteoric rise, some commentators have inferred that the regulation of desire cannot be a moral matter. As Maia Szalavitz wrote in a recent New York Times essay, “When drugs can significantly alter weight loss or addiction recovery, it’s hard to argue that the problem is moral rather than medical.” Likewise, in an article for The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino lamented that the discovery of drugs like Ozempic has not caused our culture to see appetites and desires as “biological facts rather moral choices.” In the age of Ozempic, they imply, what was once known as the sin of gluttony should now be seen as a disease, not the result of a failure to control our appetites.
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