Breaking News: GLP-1s Do Not Cure Cancer Either, But They Don’t Cause It, So Pharma Is Thrilled
I. Apparently Knowing Your Own Anatomy Is Suspicious Behavior
My hernia repair adventure began innocently enough with the usual pre-op catechism: “Can you tell me your name and date of birth?” “Any allergies?” “What procedure are you here for today, in your own words?” I responded, perhaps too intelligently. Then came the question — whispered with the same tentative caution you use when approaching a feral animal:
“Are you a healthcare professional?”
The prep nurse asked it first.
Then the anesthesiologist asked it.
The nurse, still in the room, chirped, “I asked him that, too!” like she had discovered a rare specimen.
My first answer was polite: “No, just a retired engineer who reads.”
By the time the anesthesiologist repeated the question, I’d had enough:
“No. I just have a BRAIN. Why is it surprising that a patient might research his own surgery? Are most of your patients idiots, or what?”
To his credit, he admitted that most patients don’t understand their own bodies and that it was “refreshing” to meet one who did. It did not escape me that this confession merely confirmed my point.
Throughout the day, every interaction involving anatomical terminology triggered the same wide-eyed reaction. Medicine claims to value patient education, but the moment a patient demonstrates actual literacy, the room tenses like someone has violated an unwritten rule.
Meanwhile, this same system is perfectly comfortable with dermatologists and rheumatologists prescribing incretin-based metabolic drugs because someone saw an inflammation pathway diagram at a conference.
But I’m the suspicious one because I know what a peritoneum is. Anyway, I’ll briefly fill you in regarding my hernia repair somewhere in the prose below before we get to Bullshit Corner.
II. GLP-1s: Now in Dermatology, Rheumatology, and Possibly Botany
Healio’s latest entry in the GLP-1 hype archive spotlighted the “emerging role of GLP-1s in inflammatory diseases.” Dermatology and rheumatology now want their turn at the trough. At these growth rates, I fully expect a USDA announcement any day now:
“Preliminary observational data suggest semaglutide may reduce rust blight in soybeans.”
In a panel discussion, Dr. Joel Gelfand interviewed Dr. Fatima Stanford and Dr. Philip Mease — both highly credentialed, highly enthusiastic, and highly ready to treat nearly anything involving inflammation with incretins.
Stanford noted that GLP-1 receptors are “located throughout the body,” which in pharmaceutical dialect translates to:
“We’ve found just enough plausible targets to justify prescribing this drug class for everything except drywall repair.”
Mease added that obesity drives inflammatory burden (true) and therefore GLP-1s may calm inflammatory diseases across dermatology and rheumatology.
Conveniently, a KFF poll now says 1 in 8 American adults is taking a GLP-1 drug for something — obesity, diabetes, or just influencer vibes.
This is no longer a trend. It’s a metabolic cultural takeover.
III. The Inflammation Panacea Delusion
Let us pause and be serious for a moment — a brief, rare interval in Peptide Purgatory.
Yes, GLP-1s reduce inflammation.
Yes, adipose tissue is an inflammatory organ.
Yes, psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis behave better when metabolic chaos is reduced.
But the leap from “mechanistically plausible” to “clinically standard” is where science ends and fashion begins.
Right now, GLP-1s are being treated like the duct tape of medicine: if it’s broken, wrap an incretin around it. Dermatologists prescribing pancreatic hormone analogues is the 2025 equivalent of surgeons using cocaine in the 1890s — enthusiastic, experimental, and not entirely thought through.
This is not evidence-based comprehensive care. It’s specialty-level improvisation wearing a white coat.
IV. Cancer Panic Update: Good News! GLP-1s Do Not Cause Cancer, and Bad News: They Don’t Cure It Either
Healio also summarized a major new meta-analysis of 94,245 participants across 48 randomized trials, concluding that GLP-1s:
- Do not increase obesity-related cancer risk, and
- Do not reduce cancer risk, despite the zealots who insist semaglutide has supernatural properties.
Thyroid, pancreatic, breast, kidney, colorectal, ovarian, liver, endometrial — no significant difference in incidence between GLP-1 and placebo arms during the median 70-week follow-up period.
This is objectively good news. After years of whisper networks about pancreatic cancer, C-cell tumors, or Ozempic turning your mitochondria rogue, the message is:
“These drugs do not appear to cause cancer. Please calm down.”
Of course, RCT follow-up is still short, so no sane person should declare GLP-1s definitively safe (or harmful) for long-term cancer outcomes. Five-plus years of data will be required.
Pharma executives, however, are already out celebrating.
V. Meanwhile, My Hernia Repair Was Performed by Someone Who Actually Knows What He’s Doing
While GLP-1s continue their march into every specialty with a pulse, my own interaction with medicine this week involved real, tangible competence: a robotic mesh repair of a right indirect inguinal hernia.
Not only did the surgeon repair the hernia, he also cleaned up four decades’ worth of adhesions from my 1984 open cholecystectomy. Every step of the procedure was done with the finesse of someone who actually cares where the mesh ends up.
When medicine is practiced with precision, it still works.
Which is almost quaint in 2025.
There is an old, thoroughly sexist maxim about keeping wives “fat, dumb, and in the kitchen.” Society has largely abandoned this idea — except, apparently, in the healthcare system, where the nouns have simply been swapped out.
Modern version: Keep patients uninformed, unquestioning, and out of the way.
The ideal patient is not an informed participant in their own care; the ideal patient is medical livestock — docile, compliant, and unlikely to use vocabulary that makes anyone nervous. Show up on time, say “ouch” when prompted, sign whatever’s put in front of you, and under no circumstances should you begin casually discussing your myopectineal orifice.
When someone like me walks in — older, educated, and unwilling to outsource all cognitive function to the white coats — the equilibrium collapses. Staff look at me the way cattle might look at one of their own suddenly rising up on its hind legs and reciting Gray’s Anatomy.
It spooks the others.
The Cattle Model of Care
Healthcare still runs on the same principles as a cattle operation: move the herd through efficiently and hope no one starts mooing questions. Patient literacy is treated not as an asset but as a workflow disruption.
The unspoken doctrine is simple: docile cattle move smoothly through the chute; inquisitive ones slow everything down.
This explains the shocked expressions I received every time I used correct terminology during my hernia repair workup. According to the culture, a medically literate patient is a category error.
Meanwhile, in GLP-1 Land…
While clinicians recoil at a patient who knows anatomy, dermatologists and rheumatologists are now prescribing endocrine-manipulating incretin analogues for psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, enthusiastically expanding GLP-1 use into every specialty with a billing code.
So let’s get this straight:
- Patients understanding their own bodies = suspicious.
- Dermatologists prescribing pancreatic hormone analogues = totally normal.
- One in eight adults injecting incretins weekly = fine.
- A patient asking a well-informed question = panic at the nurse’s station.
Time for a Cultural Upgrade
If healthcare genuinely wants engaged patients — they say they do — then it needs to stop treating intelligence as a risk factor. The “fat, dumb, and obedient” template belongs in the same dustbin as leeches, bloodletting, and COVID guidance from 2020.
Human beings — unlike cattle — do better when they understand what is being done to their bodies and why. Until medicine embraces that revolutionary idea, expect continued shock whenever a patient walks into the clinic armed with a working brain.
And that, dear readers, is this week’s Bullshit.
VII. Personal Update
For those following along at home:
- Post-op Day 1 pain: 0–3 depending on position and activity
- Post-op Day 2 pain: 2-5 depending on position and activity (but getting better later in the day)
- Fasting glucose: 103 mg/dL
- Weight: 81.2 kg (this is up significantly perhaps due to IV fluids and retention.
- Medications:
- Metformin only for now
- Farxiga resumes when hydration and intake normalize (then, I’ll be peeing out my donuts again)
- Mounjaro restarts after full bowel function returns (i.e., the post-operative event heralded by trumpets and fanfare)
- Exercise: Sadly, no significant weight-lifting. I got myself a pair of pussy dumbbells so I would have something to sling around that met the surgeon-mandated qualification of “not greater than 10 lbs, which meant 2×5 lb. (they’re blue, not pink). I did my motility walk today, just 1.6 miles at a leisurely 20 minute per mile pace, which I tolerated well, except for our security guys asking me a few times, “Did you see a dog?” I’ll give you a dog, already—in the head, I’ll give you.
My mesh is in place, my glucose is civilized, and my body continues its stubborn refusal to behave like a 79-year-old.
Peptide Purgatory continues, as always — where GLP-1s expand into dermatology, cancer refuses to cooperate with hype cycles, and the greatest threat to healthcare remains the patient who walks in with a functioning brain.
Peptide Purgatory chronicles one man’s ongoing experiment with GLP-1s, metabolism, and medical modernity. Side effects may include sarcasm, elevated skepticism, and mild tachycardia while reading policy papers. So, ask your doctor whether Peptide Purgatory is right for you!
For an annotated catalog of all my Peptide Purgatory and Mounjaro updates, visit my Mounjaro Update Catalog page.
I guess my experience, being a nurse, and automatically using medical lingo without self identifying is a bit different than yours. It doesn’t take long for the medical establishment to recognize you are not the average Joe who knows little about their condition for whatever reason. They usually ask if I am in the health care field. I have found that once they realize I am a health professional then the talk, explanation or whatever takes on a new thrust. I don’t get the grade two explanation and medical terminology is used. Not to say that if it is an area I am not ‘up on’ that I don’t ask for the grade two version.
You are right, as a medical person it doesn’t take long to realize that your conversation can take on a more advanced level.
I don’t find that the medical personnel are surprised, suspicious, pissed about knowledge. Most welcome questions asked at no matter what level of understanding.
Liz,
I would expect that your experience would be more positive, as you are indeed a member of the secret society (albeit beneath the glass curtain from the standpoint of some arrogant docs — I’m sure you know what I’m saying).
The more emotionally stable doctors do in fact appreciate knowledgeable patients; however, there exists a large contingent among the medical persuasion who feel — looking for a word — “inconvenienced” by patients who pose intelligent questions. They find security in their rote protocols and god forbid a patient should challenge the efficacy of some long-trusted but inferior treatment. In my experience, it is the rare doctor — even specialists — who stays up to date in his discipline. You need to go to university medical centers and other research organizations to find them, and even there, they have a second tier of dumbed-down, front-line meds.
When I ask an anesthesiologist a question like, “Which local/regional nerve block will you be using?”, I am asking for a simple answer, which will lead me to a follow-up question. When the response from him is, “Are you in the medical field?”, that’s not an answer. When we finally returned to the subject of nerve blocks, the anesthesiologist said, “We don’t use blocks for laparoscopic surgery.” That turned out to be bullshit, because they did in fact use Marcaine with epinephrine, as reflected by the surgical notes. Apparently, the good doctor wanted to sidestep any debate about nerve blocks.
I offer only praise for my surgeon. Not only is he comfortable answering difficult questions, he compliments me on my detailed preparation. He is calm, confident, and did excellent work (I had ChatGPT review the surgical notes and photos). Best of all, he wanted me to be completely satisfied with his answers before moving on.
It probably will not surprise you to learn that the surgeon is originally from Nigeria, trained overseas. Probably not a slave to AMA protocol medicine, either.
—TNT
That was a very informative and entertaining update! I’m glad the hernia surgery went well.
Regarding the response to using medical terminology with our care providers, I had a similar experience when I asked my Ophthalmologist about whether the phosphenes that I have experienced all of my life, but now had recently stopped, could have been because I was now on a very low carbohydrate diet and had stopped drinking any alcoholic beverages. My thoughts were that the resulting reduction in systemic inflammation had reduced the random, low-level firing of retina cells that cause the phosphene phenomenon.
He looked somewhat surprised and asked “Are you an Engineer?”
I stated that I wasn’t an Engineer, but I was educated in Computer Science.
He responded “That explains it. Only an engineer or scientist would know what a “phosphene” is!”
He didn’t know if my diet change was responsible for them going away.
I might have heard that story once or twice before.
The thing is, that particular doctor, whom I know, is secure enough to adapt his level of discourse to the patient’s level of sophistication. However, many of his colleagues feel inconvenienced when faced with a knowledgeable patient. They’re used to docile acceptance, not being questioned.
Much as you wouldn’t let a plumber install a toilet without giving you options and telling you what his approach will be, you don’t want doctors taking the liberty of doing whatever they feel like (or worse, whatever the politicized AMA-approved protocol calls for) without question.
I understand that many people are themselves too inconvenienced by learning about their own body functions, so they cede that territory to doctors “who know what they’re doing”. But do they? How the hell do we know they’re capable if we do not understand the subject they’re dealing with.
Not only does God help those who helps themselves, but also, they fare better in medical situations.
—TNT
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