Health Secretary Wes Streeting has dismissed suggestions that plans to provide weight loss jabs to unemployed people with obesity are “dystopian”.
The UK government is partnering with pharmaceutical giant Lilly who are running a five-year trial in Greater Manchester to test if the weight-loss drug Mounjaro can help get more people back to work and prevent obesity-related diseases to ease the strain on the NHS in England.
The announcement prompted a backlash, with accusations that the government was stigmatising unemployed individuals and reducing people to their economic value.
Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Streeting said the jabs were part of a broader healthcare plan, adding that he was “not interested in some dystopian future where I involuntarily jab unemployed people who are overweight”.
I’m not positive that is not just a way to make it more palatable to that class. There’s a very easy connection to make with obesity and it’s related diseases, depression, and unemployment. If you’re trying to do public health with a national health organization, you want to reduce the load of those chronic disease diseases.