Too Big to Lose Weight: How Pharmaceuticalization Corrupts the Right to Health

Treating obesity with weight-loss medications has redirected clinical attention toward health conditions long stigmatized as personal failings, while potentially benefiting comorbidities such as mental health. Yet this “pharmaceuticalization” is deeply intertwined with the broader financialization of health care, enabling extractive practices by dominant drug makers operating in highly concentrated markets. These dynamics unfold under limited public oversight, ultimately undermining the realization of the right to health and redefining medical progress through corrupted practices of market expansion and control. This paper adopts a moral and political economy perspective to examine the pharmaceuticalization of obesity and its intersections with mental health, revealing its implications for health systems in the United States and low- and middle-income countries.