What a desert lizard teaches us about patents and the GLP-1 revolution

After steadily rising for decades, America’s obesity rate is finally declining.

It peaked in 2022, when 39.9% of adults were obese, according to Gallup.

This year, that share dipped to 36.4% — in large part thanks to increasingly widespread GLP-1 weight-loss medicines.

About one in every nine adults currently takes Wegovy, Zepbound, or another GLP-1.

That’s roughly a ten-fold increase since 2022.

And that share will likely keep rising as the price of these drugs continues to drop.

As recently as last year, the weight-loss treatments cost over $1,000 per month.

Today, patients can purchase them for as little as $149 a month — because the leading GLP-1 manufacturers have been forced to slash prices to compete for market share.

Americans can thank a desert lizard—and the patent system—for these increasingly ubiquitous, increasingly affordable treatments.

The story begins in 1990, when John Eng, an endocrinologist at the Veterans Administration, isolated a peptide from the venom of Gila monsters, the nearly two-foot-long lizards native to the Southwest.

That peptide mimicked the human hormone GLP-1, which prompts the pancreas to release insulin and makes people feel full.

But unlike natural GLP-1, which disappears from the body within minutes, this compound remains active for hours.

Dr.

Eng patented the peptide.