We toss the word “miracle” around a lot — the ’69 Mets; the 1980 U.S. mens hockey team; Charlton Heston scowling into the wind, parting the waters of the Red Sea (or at least a Hollywood backlot).
We especially like to use it for medications, as in “miracle drug.”
Those of us who do this long enough know there ain’t no such thing, but the term keeps coming up — aspirin, penicillin, Botox ...
Dr. Allan M. Block
Recently, the popular press has hung the moniker on the GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, as “miracles.” While certainly useful, most of this comes from the drug’s reputation as the American dream of something that causes weight loss without the bother of diet and exercise. Of course, it’s also useful for diabetes, and is being investigated for numerous other conditions.
But the real truth is that it’s not a miracle (in fairness, none of the manufacturers of these drugs are making such a ridiculous claim). Nothing is. The word is tossed around for so many things that it’s almost become meaningless.
This isn’t a knock on the GLP-1 agents as much as it’s how people are. Of course, such a drug will never exist, in spite of all the claims on various Internet sites about miracle cures that Big Medicine is hiding from the public.
People are similar, but not the same, and too heterogeneous to know which drug will work/not work or cause a given side effect. We all deal with the uncertainties of medicine being a trial and error process. We try our best to communicate this to people, with varying degrees of success.
Unfortunately, human nature is such that we often hear only what we want to hear. You can run down the whole list of concerns, but some people stopped paying attention when they heard “weight loss” or “migraine relief” or whatever. Every physician ever has had to deal with this, as will those who follow us.
Medicine changes. People ... not so much.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.