The deadly shadow market feeding the world’s weight-loss drug obsession
They were supposed to be miracle injections: weekly shots that could tame type 2 diabetes and melt away stubborn kilograms with remarkable ease. But for growing numbers of patients around the world, the promise of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound has been replaced by fear — fear that the pen in their hand is fake, contaminated or completely useless. A sophisticated global black market, fuelled largely by raw pharmaceutical ingredients from China, is flooding countries with counterfeit and substandard versions of these blockbuster GLP-1 drugs. What began as a medical breakthrough has become a public health headache stretching from boardrooms…
