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…