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Even without enough knowledge about the ramifications of long-term use, it seems people may have to stay on semaglutide drugs indefinitely to keep weight off and their blood sugar regulated. There are potentially serious side effects to being on the drug for even brief periods, and there are side effects to coming off it. In July, Aria Bendix reported for NBC News that “Ozempic has been on the market for less than six years, and Wegovy for two, so doctors and patients are learning in real time what it’s like to use the drugs for extended periods.” (Jessica Grose, 12/20)

This year, the incredible potential of obesity medicines like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound started to come into view. The drugs work so well for so many that it’s starting to look like they could change the literal and metaphorical shape of society — starting with our waistlines and extending to our overall health and our habits around food and alcohol. (Lisa Jarvis, 12/20)

All Americans are worried about inflation. The prices for housing, clothes and food at the supermarket are eyepopping and threatening President Biden’s re-election. But there is one totally unexpected exception to inflation recently: health care. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 12/21)

Whether you run a small business, a large company, or a nonprofit organization, you may want to reevaluate the health care plan(s) you provide to your employees if you have not done so since 2020. No, we are not talking about COVID-19, but the United States Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S. Ct. 1731 (2020). In 2020, the Supreme Court left little doubt that the protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extend to transgender individuals. (Joycelyn Stevenson and Sarah Belchic, 12/20)

The 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health riveted the public and sparked discussions about how to make decisions for patients who had lost decision-making capacity. After Cruzan, empirical studies showed that many widely supported approaches to this problem did not work as planned, and ethical analyses showed that many of the key concepts and arguments involved were unsound. (Bernard Lo, 12/21)

Ethical issues in medicine have been hashed out for centuries, but advances in medical science often give rise to new ethical dilemmas. At the dawn of hemodialysis, for instance, a 1962 Life magazine article thrust medical ethics into public awareness when it described a predominantly lay committee that decided which patients with end-stage renal failure would have access to the new, potentially lifesaving technology — only five slots were available.1 In making these decisions, the committee was guided primarily by their individual consciences because no settled guidelines existed. (Bernard Lo, M.D., Debra Malina, Ph.D., Genevra Pittman, M.P.H., and Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., 12/21)