This Week on On The Pen: Counterfeits, Cover-Ups, and the Sound of Progress
- Dave Knapp
- 7h
- 2 min read
Original posted at obesity.news/ on Oct 28, 2025
Every headline in obesity medicine this week leads back to the same truth: patients deserve honesty, safety, and access.
The Weekly Dose opens with the U.K.’s largest-ever counterfeit GLP-1 seizure, a warehouse raid that exposed a massive illegal supply chain of fake tirzepatide and retatrutide pens. It is a story that goes beyond crime. It is about access, and what happens when desperation fills the void that affordability leaves behind.
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Then comes Cigna’s so-called “rebate reform.” The insurer announced it will end drug rebates by 2027 to “help patients.” Wall Street cheered. The stock jumped. But the math doesn’t lie. Cigna owns one of the biggest pharmacy middlemen in the country. The rebates are not disappearing, they are being renamed. For patients, it is not reform. It is rebranding.
In China, Innovent Biologics released new data on Mazdutide, a dual GLP-1 and glucagon agonist that beat semaglutide 1 mg in head-to-head trials. The results are impressive but also regional. The bigger story is how rapidly the obesity pipeline is globalizing and how innovation is no longer defined by American borders.
Back in the U.S., Tern Pharmaceuticals announced it is stepping back from obesity research after its oral GLP-1, TERN-601, failed to meet the bar set by the giants. It is a reminder of how high the standard has become scientifically, financially, and ethically in this trillion-dollar space.
Meanwhile, The Lancet published a groundbreaking analysis of the SELECT trial showing that semaglutide’s heart protection extends far beyond weight loss. Even patients who lost less weight saw fewer heart attacks and strokes. The GLP-1 revolution, once framed around appetite, is now a cardiometabolic story.
But not all headlines were hopeful. A newly surfaced Washington State Department of Health report, case #2024-17788CF, details whistleblower allegations against Aequita Pharmacy, a compounding facility once affiliated with Mochi Health. The complaint claims unlicensed workers handled GLP-1 medications, mislabeled raw materials, and experimented with sterilization methods on patient drugs. These remain allegations, not conclusions, but they raise an urgent question: when do profitability and brand reputation outweigh patient safety and ethics?
And finally, the sound that defined this entire movement has been measured.
Ro announced the RAID-FN scale, the first clinically validated tool to measure Food Noise, the internal chatter about food that millions of GLP-1 patients have finally been free from. What was once a viral hashtag is now psychometric data, built from the experiences of more than 35,000 patients. It is proof that lived experience drives science forward.
Each of these stories ties back to one central truth. The future of obesity care will not be defined by corporations or regulators, but by patients who keep asking the hardest questions and demanding better answers.
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