Labour's big pharma slimming injection to 'protect the NHS'

Labour joined forces with big pharma this week to announce "the first real world trial" of Eli Lilly's slimming injections tirzepatide on UK citizens. Hold me back, but this is odious on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin or to understand why so many people are going along with it.

Is it because it's being sold as a trial to "protect the NHS" and get people into work that is making it palatable? Or is it because we all secretly want to believe in miracle cures? By just having an injection you can forget about self-discipline, eating better, doing exercise and individual responsibility. The last time some-thing was done to "protect the NHS" we had the disastrous Covid lock-downs inflicted on us, so please forgive my cynicism.

Nothing good comes easy, my grandma used to say, and this is true of these medicines. Fat jabs work by either making you feel fuller or by stopping the fat from food being absorbed, and the side-effects vary from being sick and having diarrhoea to rarer, but more serious, problems of gall bladder disease and kidney issues. Anecdotally, when people stop taking these drugs they can put the weight back on and their appetite increases. So much for miracle cures.

And can "fat jabs" really double up as "job jabs"? Will a weekly jab really get people off benefits? I rather doubt it. The most common conditionsfor receiving incapacity benefits are mental health and behavioural issues - not being over-weight. Also, getting people into work is much more complicated than getting them to lose weight.

Some people need serious help with training and skills to be job-ready, others need persuading of the merits of work, and for others it's about showing them the financial benefits of getting a job. The latest Institute for Fiscal Studies evaluation states Brits on long-term sick risk losing £1,200 if they come off benefits and take a part-time job. So no "jobs jab" will solve that issue.

And how is the state planning to get people to keep taking these injections once the trial is over? Through compulsion? Are we really going to hold people down to force them to accept the jabs and withdraw NHS support if they don't?

And what about the trial? Health secretaryWes Streeting is literally offering UK citizens up as guinea pigs to big pharma to take part in the first five-year study of its kind, working with Eli Lilly to test tirzepatide.

Is it a coincidence that Eli Lilly has just pledged to invest £279 million in a new UK science centre? A big investment, yes, but Eli Lilly will be hoping to get a lot in return.

There are approximatelyfour million Brits on incapacity benefit. These weight loss injections cost around £200 per month. So if only one million of those on incapacity benefits (about a quarter of adults in the UK are classed as obese) were given these jabsfor a year, it would cost the taxpayer around £2.4billion. That is a big return - and it is taxpayers who will be picking up the tab.

I don't see any savings, I just see money shifting hands from the NHS to big pharma.

The biggest change here - and the sinister change - is the massive expansion of the state. It will quite literally be taking control of our bodies.

This isn't a miracle cure, it's another unnecessary expansion of state control, and we all should resist it.