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In 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics said doctors may offer weight loss drugs to children as young as eight. The longest safety trial behind the five GLP-one drugs approved for kids in America ran sixty-eight weeks. The other four ran about a year. In three of them, the back half was open label. No placebo group at all. That's like one school year. A child could be on one of these for a decade, right through puberty, bone development, and growth to full height. And weight loss from GLP-one drugs can be forty five percent lean body mass. Nobody has measured what that does to a body that's still being built. The safety windows shut at about a year. That is like load testing a roof for one winter and then rating it for thirty. Every one of those five trials was funded by the company selling the drug. Not one independent replication exists. And the recommendation itself? It was based on two drug trials. One was a GLP-one, funded by Novo Nordisk. The other wasn't a GLP-one at all. Both were still enrolling patients when the Academy's evidence review was done. And for the 8 to 11 age group, there were no published trials of these drugs at all. The Academy recommended them anyway, by consensus. This body represents 67,000 pediatricians. When they publish, practice changes. So what moves an academy of this size to recommend drugs with no long-term safety data in kids? Well, a BMJ analysis published in July, 2025 reported the Academy accepted at least $1.9M in corporate sponsorship from eleven GLP-one developers. Then they looked at the leadership. 17 of 77 Academy national leaders took money from those same companies. And on the committees that actually wrote the guideline, 10 of 27 took payments. One member took $41,000 from a single drug company. None of it appears in the guideline's disclosures. The Academy says it completed its own internal review for bias, but reported nothing. Most of those payments were meals, travel, and lodging. Small stuff. And small is the strategy. Back in 2007, a Georgetown physician and a former drug rep described the industry's approach to gifting as carefully calibrated generosity. The use of gifts, they said, are gestures of sympathy towards overworked physicians. That is not my theory about anybody. That is a former rep describing his own job. I am not telling you these drugs don't work for kids. I am telling you the safety evidence is one year deep, the seller paid for all of it, and the Academy did not show you the money that changed hands. That concerns me. Your kid is counting on your due diligence here. Let's face it, being overweight is a challenge, but there are things that could actually be worse.
Transcript:
In 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics said doctors may offer weight loss drugs to children as young as eight. The longest safety trial behind the five GLP-1 drugs approved for kids in America ran sixty-eight weeks. The other four ran about a year. In three of them, the back half was open label. No placebo group at all. That's like one school year. A child could be on one of these for a decade, right through puberty, bone development, and growth to full height. And weight loss from GLP-1 drugs can be forty five percent lean body mass. Nobody has measured what that does to a body that's still being built. The safety windows shut at about a year. That is like load testing a roof for one winter and then rating it for thirty. Every one of those five trials was funded by the company selling the drug. Not one independent replication exists. And the recommendation itself? It was based on two drug trials. One was a GLP-1, funded by Novo Nordisk. The other wasn't a GLP-1 at all. Both were still enrolling patients when the Academy's evidence review was done. And for the 8 to 11 age group, there were no published trials of these newer drugs at all. The Academy recommended them anyway, by consensus. This body represents 67,000 pediatricians. When they publish, practice changes. So what moves an academy of this size to recommend drugs with no long-term safety data in kids? Well, a BMJ analysis published in July, 2025 reported the Academy accepted at least $1.9M in corporate sponsorship from eleven GLP-1 developers. Then they looked at the leadership. 17 of 77 Academy national leaders took money from those same companies. And on the committees that actually wrote the guideline, 10 of 27 took payments. One member took $41,000 from a single drug company. None of it appears in the guideline's disclosures. The Academy says it completed its own internal review for bias, but reported nothing. Most of those payments were meals, travel, and lodging. Small stuff. And small is the strategy. Back in 2007, a Georgetown physician and a former drug rep described the industry's approach to gifting as carefully calibrated generosity. The use of gifts, they said, are gestures of sympathy towards overworked physicians. That is not my theory about anybody. That is a former rep describing his own job. I am not telling you these drugs don't work for kids. I am telling you the safety evidence is one year deep, the seller paid for all of it, and the Academy did not show you the money that changed hands. That concerns me. Your kid is counting on your due diligence here. Let's face it, being overweight is a challenge, but there are things that could actually be worse.