Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: over now to Washington, because David Rubinstein is just about
Speaker 1: to begin speaking with Eli Lilly's CEO, and this is
Speaker 1: taking place at the Economic Club of Washington. We're going
Speaker 1: to check in with them as a begin to speak.
Speaker 2: Let's listen in.
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know one's paid more than me, but yeah,
Speaker 3: well he shouldn't be paid more than you. But okay,
Speaker 3: so let's talk about these phenomenon that's changed the world
Speaker 3: to some extent. Which is the anti obesity drug. Now,
Speaker 3: to make sure everybody's on the same page links, what
Speaker 3: is the name of your anti obesit drug?
Speaker 4: Okay, so the name is zep bound. The active ingredients
Speaker 4: called their zeppatide.
Speaker 5: So, by the way, who comes up with these names?
Speaker 5: Where do you raise names?
Speaker 2: Not me, David, not me.
Speaker 4: No, it's it's more complicated than we want to talk
Speaker 4: about here. But we can't have names that are similar
Speaker 4: to each other because doctors make prescribing ers. We can't
Speaker 4: have names that make claims about what the drug does,
Speaker 4: and we can't have names that only work in English.
Speaker 2: So we end up with these strange sounding names.
Speaker 3: Ok So, as I understand that number of years ago
Speaker 3: you can tell us how many somebody was working on
Speaker 3: a diabetes related drug and that drug ultimately got.
Speaker 5: To be approved by the FDA.
Speaker 3: But somebody discovered that actually helps you reduce weight. When
Speaker 3: was that discovered and was that ever the intention when
Speaker 3: the drug was being developed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty early on.
Speaker 4: So we launched the first GLP one medication in the
Speaker 4: world in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: It was called extend the Tide.
Speaker 4: It was a twice daily injection and it was indicated
Speaker 4: for people with diabetes. Like a lot of things in medicine,
Speaker 4: there's like iterative steps of improvement that occurred.
Speaker 2: But that was the first effort.
Speaker 4: On the cover of our the next year, our annual
Speaker 4: report is a woman who was using the drug and
Speaker 4: she said, my diabetes is under control, and I noticed
Speaker 4: I'm losing a little weight. Actually two thousand and six,
Speaker 4: it's a cover of our anal report. But we had
Speaker 4: to improve the medicines to really make them effective for
Speaker 4: weight loss. One big improvement was to make them weekly.
Speaker 4: That's a convenience benefit, but even more important, the action
Speaker 4: of the medicine flatter, meaning more consistent through the day
Speaker 4: and night. When we had it twice a day, there
Speaker 4: were ups and downs, and one effect of GLP one
Speaker 4: medications is they cause nausea and other gi distress. That's
Speaker 4: a function of the up and down in your system.
Speaker 4: So when we made it weekly, it was flatter and
Speaker 4: we could dose higher to see more weight loss. So
Speaker 4: that was sort of an accidental breakthrough of trying to
Speaker 4: make a more convenient form.
Speaker 3: So now there's another company that is sort of in
Speaker 3: the same business, Novode nord Is Yes, which is in Denmark,
Speaker 3: and they have a similar product, and they have a
Speaker 3: product that does the same thing. One is for o
Speaker 3: antiobesity and one is for diabetes and correct is there
Speaker 3: really any difference between the two of your drugs In
Speaker 3: terms of the drugs, there are.
Speaker 4: There's no difference really between the name the drug that's
Speaker 4: named for diabetes versus name for Obesit for either company.
Speaker 4: We do that for insurance reasons. We could talk about.
Speaker 4: But trezepetide is the latest version. It has two modes
Speaker 4: of action. So and by the way, we're having a
Speaker 4: conversation about weight loss medications. Right after you just ate lunch,
Speaker 4: and I know that that may cost some anxiety, but
Speaker 4: right now because you just ate lunch, your GI track
Speaker 4: is communicating with the rest of your body.
Speaker 2: It's communicating with.
Speaker 4: Hormones or proteins and telling it that you've been fed
Speaker 4: and you need to absorb nutrients and other things that
Speaker 4: are essentible life because food is essential life. What we're
Speaker 4: doing is boosting some of those signals with these medications.
Speaker 4: They're boosting the signal that you're full, boosting the signal
Speaker 4: that you no longer want to eat more in boosting
Speaker 4: signals that you should absorb nutrients that you've consumed, and
Speaker 4: so ours does that with two different hormones, one called
Speaker 4: GLP one, another new one called gip ozepic or semaglue
Speaker 4: tide just uses GLP one.
Speaker 3: But what the drug does is what it tells your
Speaker 3: body you're full when you're maybe not as full as
Speaker 3: you used to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, so it tells your body your full, and
Speaker 4: it does that to the brain sense of saiety. Probably
Speaker 4: we've learned over time our sense of fullness becomes conditional.
Speaker 4: So as people eat more habitually, that signal kicks in
Speaker 4: later and later, and that's a cause and consequence of obesity.
Speaker 4: It does other things too, It actually makes your stomach
Speaker 4: fuller because it slows gastric motility, so it slows down
Speaker 4: your nutrients, which seems counterintuitive, but when you eat in
Speaker 4: when we our ancestors were alive ten thousand years ago,
Speaker 4: meals were rare and you want to absorb all the
Speaker 4: nutrients out of it. So that signal said, absorb the nutrients.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: I don't want to confuse people, but there are four
Speaker 3: different names that people should know for these drugs. Now
Speaker 3: you have an anti BCD drug which is called what
Speaker 3: zep bound bound, and then you have a diabetes drug
Speaker 3: which is.
Speaker 2: Called Manjaro, same medicine, different.
Speaker 5: Name, different names.
Speaker 3: And then Novo Nordis Nordisk has two drugs.
Speaker 2: Their names are Ozempic and we go vy All.
Speaker 4: Both are semiglue tide, same medicine, two different names.
Speaker 3: But the confusing thing is Ozempic is like it's like
Speaker 3: a generic name. People say, I'm on ozempic. Ozempic is
Speaker 3: not the anti obesity drug, it's the diabetes ibtes drug.
Speaker 5: So why is it? Why don't people get the right names?
Speaker 2: Should we blame the media? I don't know. It was
Speaker 2: the first.
Speaker 4: Drug that began to be used off label for obesity,
Speaker 4: and again it was a flat once a week, and
Speaker 4: people discovered if I just give take more than prescribed,
Speaker 4: I can lose more weight. And then Novo did a
Speaker 4: study credit to them that showed clinically that people lose
Speaker 4: clin meaningful.
Speaker 2: Weight on their medicine.
Speaker 4: You lose you know, thirteen to fifteen percent of your
Speaker 4: body weight. On ours, you lose you know, twenty to
Speaker 4: twenty six percent.
Speaker 3: Well, let me go through that again, because there was
Speaker 3: a study. It was just came out a couple of
Speaker 3: days ago. I think that said one on one comparing
Speaker 3: the two. Your drug anti obese drug loses weight more
Speaker 3: rapidly for people than the other product.
Speaker 2: Is that rapidly? And more so?
Speaker 4: Forty seven percent more so After a year and a half, roughly,
Speaker 4: people on our drug loss seventeen more.
Speaker 2: Pounds then on we go.
Speaker 3: I know people need to lose so much weight in
Speaker 3: this country. Our country has as I got it right,
Speaker 3: seventy five percent of the people are overweight and forty
Speaker 3: two percent are obese. When did that happen when we
Speaker 3: went to no fat fruit? Or when did all of
Speaker 3: a sudden we become so obese?
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you look at the epidemiology charts. It really
Speaker 4: seems to have started in the sixties growth in overweight
Speaker 4: and obesit in the country, and really excel righted in
Speaker 4: the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: So what are the reasons?
Speaker 4: How we live certainly is one of them, and energy
Speaker 4: expenditure has to be part of the story. What we eat, though,
Speaker 4: is probably a more important reason, not just the quantity
Speaker 4: which has risen modestly through that period of time, but
Speaker 4: actually what's in our food has changed, and I think
Speaker 4: that's also attributed to this.
Speaker 5: All right, So back to the drug.
Speaker 3: When you realized it could lose weight, did you get
Speaker 3: the FDA to say, yes, it can be prescribed for
Speaker 3: losing weight or it's still you can't get that prescribed
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 4: As of last year, we zetbound launched It's for weight
Speaker 4: loss for people who have high body weight.
Speaker 3: And do insurance companies reimburse people for the cost of
Speaker 3: these drugs?
Speaker 4: Some do, more should so as of today, the federal
Speaker 4: government actually has a prohibition on reimbursing any of these drugs,
Speaker 4: which is a problem I think, although the Biden administration
Speaker 4: just advanced rulemaking to change that. That's good news and
Speaker 4: we hope the next administration will continue that process. Seventeen
Speaker 4: states in their Medicaid program have decided to step outside
Speaker 4: of that federal rule and reimburse them anyway. So California
Speaker 4: just started, for instance, Massachusetts, other states and then about
Speaker 4: sixty percent of employers have some form of reimbursement.
Speaker 3: So if losing weight makes you healthier, why would people
Speaker 3: who care about insurance reimbursement medicare and not insist on
Speaker 3: paying for this because it would make you healthier and
Speaker 3: therefore you don't have other diseases you have that they
Speaker 3: have to reimburse you for.
Speaker 4: I think in four or five years, we'll look back
Speaker 4: and say, yeah, that's what should have happened, and it's
Speaker 4: silly that we don't pay for what is already known
Speaker 4: to be a primary contributor to poor health, which is
Speaker 4: excess body weight.
Speaker 2: But you do, people have different motives and incentives.
Speaker 4: As you know, we re enroll in commercial assurance every year.
Speaker 4: So unfortunately, I don't think insurance companies have your best
Speaker 4: interest at heart. Maybe that's tough to say, but they
Speaker 4: really think about it in one year increments and the
Speaker 4: benefits surely will play out over a longer period of time.
Speaker 4: Maybe your employer has a stronger interest in your long
Speaker 4: term health. That's probably why many have stepped forward.
Speaker 2: And then evidence.
Speaker 4: Our job is to make the evidence produce the evidence
Speaker 4: that we're not just having people lose weight, but losing
Speaker 4: weight with our medicine causes improved health. And we have
Speaker 4: many studies out this year that are demonstrating that.
Speaker 3: So to take this medicine, you have to inject yourself, correct.
Speaker 5: Us, Yeah, well why not just go to a pill?
Speaker 2: A great idea. Yeah, we're working on that.
Speaker 4: The injection you have to inject because it's a protein
Speaker 4: and if we orally take proteins, your body thinks it's
Speaker 4: food and it breaks up proteins, so you cannot really
Speaker 4: take these drugs or eily. You have to bypass the
Speaker 4: GI track even though it's affecting, and go right to
Speaker 4: the bloodstream. But we are working on a pill. We'll
Speaker 4: have some data actually as early as next year. It's
Speaker 4: a GLP one only it's a single acting It's not
Speaker 4: going to be as good as yours appetiteer as that
Speaker 4: found be about as good as oozempic, we hope, and
Speaker 4: this would be a once daily pill.
Speaker 2: That'll be a fantastic innovation.
Speaker 3: So when you have drugs that are very very popular
Speaker 3: that you often have people that make counterfeit or copycat drugs.
Speaker 3: We see them on television all the time advertise, right,
Speaker 3: what about for this do you have to worry about
Speaker 3: counterfeit drugs coming in that are trying to say the
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 4: It's a terrible problem right now, actually, because I think
Speaker 4: consumers don't really know.
Speaker 2: The dangers or the difference.
Speaker 4: Today, the FDA and the government has allowed this to
Speaker 4: sort of grow. And of course a weight loss medication
Speaker 4: that's effective would be a popular thing for people to
Speaker 4: go around the healthier system and seek treatment on their own.
Speaker 4: But the data we have is that eighty percent of
Speaker 4: these medicines are coming out of China from unapproved and
Speaker 4: unregulated sources. We recently with Borders and Customs seized a
Speaker 4: big batch that was shipped in dog food. People then
Speaker 4: reformulate them and sell them locally in meds and other outfits.
Speaker 4: But you really don't know what's in that bile. We
Speaker 4: buy them and test them, we find bacteria, plant material, viruses, fungus.
Speaker 2: You do not want to be using.
Speaker 3: See, But these counterfeit drugs are not like they're cheaper.
Speaker 3: They're cheaper because they don't have the same ingredients I assume.
Speaker 3: But how much more expensive are your drugs than the
Speaker 3: counterfeit ones? In other words, if somebody wants to use
Speaker 3: your product, zep bound, how much does it cost a month?
Speaker 4: You can buy zet bound direct from Lily for three
Speaker 4: ninety nine for the starter dose.
Speaker 5: Eight dollars and ninety nine cents.
Speaker 4: No, this is a valuable innovation, David.
Speaker 2: Three hundred ninety nine, three dred and ninety.
Speaker 4: Nine dollars a month, all right, which is about one
Speaker 4: hundred dollars a week. And I know that's a sacrifice
Speaker 4: for many, but that's without insurance. With insurance, most people
Speaker 4: pay twenty five dollars a month. So that's the importance
Speaker 4: of insurance. That's why we buy insurance to shield us
Speaker 4: from our health costs. The online ones, you know, are
Speaker 4: as cheap as one hundred dollars. But these are companies
Speaker 4: that want all the benefits of being a drug company
Speaker 4: but bear none of the responsibilities.
Speaker 3: But you, for example, you have this underpatent for how
Speaker 3: many years? In other words, our system is you have
Speaker 3: a drug, you have twenty years from invention. Yeah, from events.
Speaker 3: So how many more years do you have before it
Speaker 3: goes generic?
Speaker 4: Until mid twenty thirties? Yeah, so another ten eleven years.
Speaker 3: Okay, And is this the most popular drug that Eli
Speaker 3: Lilly has ever had?
Speaker 4: Should be by the end of the year, Yeah, break
Speaker 4: that record and go beyond probably right.
Speaker 3: Some people say that if you go on this drug,
Speaker 3: you have side effects that are not completely desirable.
Speaker 5: Is that true?
Speaker 4: So yeah, there's two things to all drugs that work
Speaker 4: have side effects and sometimes on tour effects, and we
Speaker 4: have to warn against both of those. That's why we
Speaker 4: do controlled studies and measure them carefully. Many people have
Speaker 4: mild to moderate GI distress when they start, that's why
Speaker 4: we ty trade. We started a low dose, We recommend
Speaker 4: a low dose and go up slowly. Almost everybody stays
Speaker 4: on the drug and goes through that and by the
Speaker 4: third or fourth really don't have any effects any more
Speaker 4: of that at all. There are a few people where
Speaker 4: we don't have data or we are cautious. One is
Speaker 4: women who could become pregnant. Neither of the medications have
Speaker 4: information about that. And then there's a condition called pancreatitis,
Speaker 4: which is sort of an inflamed pancreas. We worry about
Speaker 4: that with these drugs. So if you've had a history that,
Speaker 4: don't use them.
Speaker 3: Let's suppose you take the drug and say, I've lost weight,
Speaker 3: I'm very happy with my body.
Speaker 5: Now I'm going to get off the drug.
Speaker 3: Some people say that there are it's very difficult to
Speaker 3: not regain the weight.
Speaker 4: That's right, and science tells us that there's a reason
Speaker 4: for that. Some people do maintain the weight reduction or
Speaker 4: stay in that range, they have to change a lot
Speaker 4: about how they live, burn more energy, eat different foods.
Speaker 4: So we can all try that. I think we should
Speaker 4: all try that, actually, but some people cannot. And there's
Speaker 4: a recent paper in Nature that actually told us why,
Speaker 4: which is that once have become obese, your fat sales
Speaker 4: learned that that's their new state, and they defend that state,
Speaker 4: and so they're actually wanting more energy and that sends
Speaker 4: signals to your brain and so forth. So once we
Speaker 4: as adults gain weight and have that on for a while,
Speaker 4: it's very very difficult to reset your thermostat if you
Speaker 4: would to reset that level. So for now we do
Speaker 4: recommend if they can't. People cannot maintain weight loss off
Speaker 4: the drug to go back on the drugs and use
Speaker 4: them chronically.
Speaker 3: So we do put fluoride in the water now, or
Speaker 3: at least for the time being. What about putting this
Speaker 3: in the water and just solve all the problems, Well.
Speaker 2: We couldn't. We shouldn't put it in the water.
Speaker 4: People should use it under the guidance of their doctors.
Speaker 4: But we should have broad coverage, just like we think
Speaker 4: it would be crazy if we didn't have antihypertensive medications
Speaker 4: available to all adults in America.
Speaker 2: Or anti diabetes medications.
Speaker 4: Obesity causes two hundred and thirty six adult diseases, and
Speaker 4: we know it's a precursor for these things. Why not
Speaker 4: try to prevent it. We have a stigma in our
Speaker 4: country and in many other countries that this is sort
Speaker 4: of some personal failing. But many of us we're here
Speaker 4: because our ancestors can served energy very effectively. That's how
Speaker 4: they survive famines and floods and so forth. So we're
Speaker 4: pre determined to want to keep weight on by our
Speaker 4: genetic background, and we in a world of plenty of abundance,
Speaker 4: we need to probably have some medical help sometimes.
Speaker 3: So what about over the counter. Why can't this just
Speaker 3: be an over the counter drug. You're going just go
Speaker 3: buy it like an AskMen or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we'll try to work on that through time.
Speaker 4: The oral pill we have is a great candada for that,
Speaker 4: because that's much easier to dispense in that kind of
Speaker 4: pharmacy setting, and we'll need to get more evidence that
Speaker 4: it's broadly safe. Here you don't have the doctors supervision piece,
Speaker 4: so we would want to make sure, particularly develop data
Speaker 4: and pregnant women in other settings to make sure that
Speaker 4: that could be safely done. But we would have an
Speaker 4: interest in expanding access for this medication and reducing the price.
Speaker 3: So how many times a day do you going to
Speaker 3: ask about this drug today?
Speaker 5: Hour on the hour?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Many, yeah, dozens. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's a pleasure to talk about it because it's
Speaker 4: such a breakthrough.
Speaker 2: It can change our country.
Speaker 3: But nobody really expected that to happen. As you point out,
Speaker 3: sometimes things happen unexpectedly. So let's talk about some other
Speaker 3: things for a while. Let's talk about Eli Lilly itself.
Speaker 3: When was this company started?
Speaker 4: Yeah, eighteen seventy six, so started by a Colonel Eli
Speaker 4: Lilly who served in the Civil War. He was a
Speaker 4: pharmacist by training, led infantry and artillery company and was
Speaker 4: a prisoner of war in Alabama actually, and he saw
Speaker 4: firsthand the atrocities of.
Speaker 2: Medical care in the Civil War.
Speaker 4: You may know, you know, your student of history, that
Speaker 4: more people died after injury than from their injury due
Speaker 4: to medical care. And at the time this was an
Speaker 4: air of snake oil salesman. Medicine wasn't very advanced, but
Speaker 4: what we thought of medicine often was back to the
Speaker 4: counterfeiting discussion, you know, made up things, harmful ingredients. So
Speaker 4: he started a company with a pledge to say everything
Speaker 4: that's in this is on the label.
Speaker 2: If it's in there, you know about it.
Speaker 4: Transparency, and that then evolved into a company that embraced
Speaker 4: the scientific method and began to really adopt the methods
Speaker 4: that the modern industry has, which is then taking natural products,
Speaker 4: which is what most medicines were in eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 4: and refining them into what we think of as medicine now.
Speaker 4: So thank Willow bark into aspirin or pancreases of cows
Speaker 4: into insulin.
Speaker 2: That's what the company really was built on.
Speaker 5: How long did he live after he started the company.
Speaker 4: About twenty five years and he handed the keys to
Speaker 4: his son JK. Lilly, who handed the keys to his
Speaker 4: two sons, also named Eli and JK. That's a little odd,
Speaker 4: but for three generations it was a family run business.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the family is not an owner now not well.
Speaker 4: So the legacy wealth of the family is our largest shareholder,
Speaker 4: the Lily Endowment.
Speaker 3: So that only endowment is now probably the biggest foundation
Speaker 3: in the United States. Eighty billion dollars of assets Onner Management, right, yep.
Speaker 2: And they have one asset essentially, which is okay.
Speaker 5: And they're your biggest shareholder. Yeah, so okay.
Speaker 3: So when Eli Lilly evolved over the years in the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, what were its big products?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so insulin really was the birth of the modern company.
Speaker 4: And this was obviously a terrible condition, type one diabetes
Speaker 4: and a breakthrough, and we were part of commercializing that
Speaker 4: around the world, invented the manufacturing method and created that
Speaker 4: business that was followed by actually penicillin. So during World
Speaker 4: War Two, Lily was commissioned as one of the manufacturers
Speaker 4: for antibiotics for the army and we from there then
Speaker 4: iterated for forty years antibiotics, including still some that are
Speaker 4: used today like bankamasin which is the last line of
Speaker 4: defense for the worst infections.
Speaker 2: And Prozac we're famous for.
Speaker 4: Which really brought modern psychiatry into the fold. And of
Speaker 4: course now Manjarro and zep.
Speaker 3: Bound And what about the future your work? What are
Speaker 3: the human problems you're working on on the future. Alzheimer's,
Speaker 3: I assume is one of them.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, So we think about our company. Of course,
Speaker 4: we use scientific methods to create medicines to solve tough problems.
Speaker 4: We're not really interested in niche problems. We think we're
Speaker 4: here because we're a big company to do hard problems
Speaker 4: that are scalable. That's sort of where it makes our
Speaker 4: business work, but also is the most human impact. So
Speaker 4: we select these diseases that are common and tough. So
Speaker 4: you mentioned Alzheimer's, NERD degenerative conditions or the most frightening conditions.
Speaker 4: Most people think about Parkinson's als Alzheimer's and the science
Speaker 4: we've been investing there for thirty years. We just launched
Speaker 4: our first medicine and so now we're getting revenue after
Speaker 4: thirty years on that project, and we're working on a
Speaker 4: prevention study for that same medicine, which could really transform Alzheimer's.
Speaker 4: We think other nerd degenerfic conditions like Parkinson's als et cetera,
Speaker 4: are becoming more tractable with science, and you'll see us
Speaker 4: invest heavily in that area going forward. Pain chronic pain
Speaker 4: another area we're very interested in.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the company today. How many employees
Speaker 3: do you have? Forty four thousand and you're.
Speaker 5: Headquartered in Indianapolis?
Speaker 2: Yes? Correct?
Speaker 3: And where do you manufacture your drugs? Are they most
Speaker 3: in the US or mostly overseas?
Speaker 4: Mostly in the US so, though a large majority in
Speaker 4: Europe as well. So those are two big bases for production.
Speaker 2: And in the US.
Speaker 4: We're building lots of plants right now, mostly to support
Speaker 4: zep Bound and Manjarro, but.
Speaker 2: Spreading our footprint.
Speaker 5: So when did your stock went up?
Speaker 3: As I said, about ten times, I mean, when did
Speaker 3: you all realize this is so transformative that you're going
Speaker 3: to become the most valuable pharmaceutical company in the world
Speaker 3: by a factor of four or five times?
Speaker 4: You know, as you know from running companies, David, it's
Speaker 4: hard to know exactly what the scale of something is.
Speaker 4: But I will the story of zepidite Zebound for me,
Speaker 4: is this. In twenty sixteen, I was named as the
Speaker 4: incoming CEO. In that fall, one of our scientists in
Speaker 4: the diabetes group called me about some early results they
Speaker 4: were receiving from singaporean site we had. It was doing
Speaker 4: a study with chur zepetite, the ingredient and zep bound
Speaker 4: and we had to stop the study because people were
Speaker 4: losing too much weight to stay in it. And at
Speaker 4: first this was seen as like an alarming thing, but
Speaker 4: of course we began to process that is, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: this could be something very special. So we sped to
Speaker 4: the next stage of development, phase two, where you try
Speaker 4: to show safety and efficacy in a bigger study.
Speaker 2: And I remember, in.
Speaker 4: A kind of a moment, I was showing my daughter
Speaker 4: around to college as we were at cal Berkeley, standing
Speaker 4: outside of the Lawrence Hall of Science, and I got
Speaker 4: a phone call and the team just got off the plane,
Speaker 4: got the results and showed that people were losing over
Speaker 4: twenty percent body weight in a longer study.
Speaker 2: That was in April of eighteen.
Speaker 4: We disclosed those results later that year, and you could
Speaker 4: probably argue a lot of the run up in Lily
Speaker 4: was just execution from that moment forward because we had
Speaker 4: a pretty big study with some great results.
Speaker 2: We didn't know it would be this much, but we
Speaker 2: knew it was special.
Speaker 3: And you decided when you were overseeing this that we
Speaker 3: should continue this.
Speaker 4: We started building factories. We invested five to six billion
Speaker 4: dollars in a phase three program.
Speaker 3: If I had been moved our ships, so if I
Speaker 3: had been at your job, I would have taken credit
Speaker 3: for all of this. So did you take the credit
Speaker 3: for this or you're the person responsible for this happening
Speaker 3: or not?
Speaker 4: I mean, of course, as a CEO, you have a
Speaker 4: role in all this, but it would be way overstating
Speaker 4: the role if I took credit. You know, first of all,
Speaker 4: we're an old company and have people have worked there
Speaker 4: for thirty years on this problem, So the credit goes
Speaker 4: to the scientists to begin with. Secondly, we have a
Speaker 4: lot of incumbent capabilities, like how do you take a
Speaker 4: protein like GLP one, which in the natural body lasts
Speaker 4: only a few seconds and make it into a week
Speaker 4: long injection. So that's a pharmacology exercise that's difficult, and
Speaker 4: we have people who can do that, and we have
Speaker 4: people who do the clinical trials and everything else to
Speaker 4: see the opportunity and go for it. We have people
Speaker 4: who make it every day twenty four to seven. We
Speaker 4: run our factories. So it's a giant team sport. Just
Speaker 4: like the legacy of our success on my watch will
Speaker 4: go beyond my tenure. I'm inheriting some of that for
Speaker 4: my presence.
Speaker 3: Is there one scientist that somebody can point to as
Speaker 3: the person who is responsible.
Speaker 5: For this revolution?
Speaker 4: Well, so there's four scientists that Lilly who invented this drug,
Speaker 4: and we celebrate them. By the way, three are immigrants
Speaker 4: to this country. That's an interesting conversation, and they live
Speaker 4: in Indianapolis, and so it's sometimes pointed out that the
Speaker 4: most valuable biotech company in the world is based in Indiana,
Speaker 4: and that's a surprising.
Speaker 2: Fact to people.
Speaker 4: But people come from all over the world that work
Speaker 4: at our site to create amazing medicines.
Speaker 3: So the way the pharmaceutical industry works, I understand is
Speaker 3: you look at lots of potential problems that need to
Speaker 3: be solved, You work with scientists to come up with
Speaker 3: the drug, and so forth, you test them. What is
Speaker 3: a typical period of time between you you say we're
Speaker 3: going to solve a problem with finding a drug and
Speaker 3: then you actually get somebody to the market.
Speaker 5: How long does that typically take?
Speaker 4: So your better case scenario would be eight to twelve years.
Speaker 4: As I mentioned in Alzheimer's, we actually spent thirty four
Speaker 4: years before we launch a drug.
Speaker 2: So this is a long, long.
Speaker 3: Cycle time or eighth to twelve But how many drugs
Speaker 3: do you work on that just you say it's not
Speaker 3: going to work and you just move forward with other ones.
Speaker 3: There's it a ninety percent failure rate and ten percent success.
Speaker 4: Rate, So it's about one hundred to one from idea
Speaker 4: to market. So for one hundred ideas you might get
Speaker 4: one product, it's about ten to one from starting clinical studies,
Speaker 4: so you have about ninety percent failure rate from phase
Speaker 4: one forwarding.
Speaker 3: So some people say that drug companies don't really produce
Speaker 3: that many drugs anymore. They're more marketing organizations that they
Speaker 3: go out and find smaller companies that are producing these
Speaker 3: drugs and then they buy them up. Is that where
Speaker 3: you get most of your new drugs from? Or do
Speaker 3: you do development internal yourself?
Speaker 4: We're maybe a bit of an exception, we're about two
Speaker 4: thirds internal. But even that, Steban, you know, what is
Speaker 4: the development where so is it the drugs origin or
Speaker 4: is it the studies and the expertise at it along
Speaker 4: the way. So we do buy small companies, we also
Speaker 4: collaborate with them. We take what they worked on and
Speaker 4: we carry it forward. Is that extern I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I think we added a lot of value there too.
Speaker 4: But we have a big scientific base. Lily employees almost
Speaker 4: four thousand PhDs just for reference, Harvard employees like two thousand.
Speaker 2: So we have a huge scientific base to create new medicines.
Speaker 4: It's a big part of our strategy.
Speaker 3: And in the pharmaceutical world, the image is not always
Speaker 3: so wonderful with the public. I'm sure you're aware of
Speaker 3: this that people say pharmaceutical companies, drug companies, they will
Speaker 3: call them, are charged too much and so forth. How
Speaker 3: do you respond to the idea that drug companies are
Speaker 3: charging too much? And very often people United States say
Speaker 3: I'm going to cross the border of Canada get the
Speaker 3: same drug for a lower price.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for asking that.
Speaker 4: You know, obviously it's something we want to change and
Speaker 4: fix because what we think we do is pretty valuable.
Speaker 4: First problem is for artifact of history and how healthcare
Speaker 4: insurance evolved in this country, people are largely shielded from
Speaker 4: surgery costs.
Speaker 2: And hospital costs.
Speaker 4: About three percent of those total costs in our country
Speaker 4: are paid out of pocket by consumers, but for medicines
Speaker 4: it's closer to twenty percent. So people think the medicines
Speaker 4: are a larger part of the health bill because they're
Speaker 4: exposed to more of that versus services. That's again a
Speaker 4: historic thing. We advocate for better insurance coverage, lower out
Speaker 4: of pocket costs for medications. The second thing is it
Speaker 4: means to be foreign countries. It is true our prices
Speaker 4: are lower in those places. We would like to correct
Speaker 4: that as well. I mean, our idea is that basically
Speaker 4: the cost of a medicine is the cost of the
Speaker 4: R and D to produce it, more so than the manufacturing.
Speaker 2: Obviously, manufacturing costs is similar everywhere.
Speaker 4: And right now there is an imbalance and who covers
Speaker 4: that R and D cost. We should seek to correct that.
Speaker 4: But the answer isn't just lower us to Canada's pricing.
Speaker 4: We wouldn't have a pharmaceutical industry if we did that.
Speaker 4: They don't pay for any of the R and D costs.
Speaker 4: We have to raise develop countries what they pay, and
Speaker 4: we can lower the US. I think that's a policy
Speaker 4: argument we'll hear about soon with the new administration and
Speaker 4: what we're happy to engage, but we need to do both.
Speaker 2: At the same time.
Speaker 3: So today the pharmaceutical industry is most concerned about what
Speaker 3: in Washington. You're in Washington, I assume for a meeting
Speaker 3: of the Business Roundtable later on other things. But what
Speaker 3: are you most concerned about? Are you concerned about the
Speaker 3: new administration coming into power. Have you met with President
Speaker 3: Electrum talk about your issues? Have you met with members
Speaker 3: of Congress to talk about your issues? What are your
Speaker 3: big issues you care about in Washington?
Speaker 4: Well, we have general issues for American business, like tax reform,
Speaker 4: which is a big topic going to be for next year,
Speaker 4: and the regulatory situation, which I think has evolved for
Speaker 4: US in our industry in a negative way in the
Speaker 4: last four years. So those are hot topics that a
Speaker 4: general sense. Healthcare is always a topic and so then
Speaker 4: our role in it, and medicine affordability is a key
Speaker 4: area one, you know, But I think my experience, having
Speaker 4: done this for eight years, is there's often more common
Speaker 4: ground than you'd think just reading the newspapers.
Speaker 2: I think everyone would like.
Speaker 4: The US have a strong biofarmer industry that had been
Speaker 4: some amazing medicines like setbound and makes them here like
Speaker 4: Lily does. But at the same time, we want our
Speaker 4: things to be cheap and accessible to all. Okay, that's
Speaker 4: hard to solve for all those things, but we can
Speaker 4: make progress.
Speaker 2: Like one example is we were known.
Speaker 4: For the insulin pricing challenges we had, and insulin was
Speaker 4: overpriced in the US, according to the critics, and we
Speaker 4: were able to bring that price down. Why by compressing
Speaker 4: basically the middleman and what they get, and then working
Speaker 4: with medicare to cap the cost of insulin, which we
Speaker 4: supported at thirty five dollars a month. I think there
Speaker 4: are solutions and by engaging we can find them, and
Speaker 4: we're happy to do that with the new administration or
Speaker 4: the current one of these.
Speaker 5: Have you met with anybody in the new administration yet?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think it was reported last week we had a
Speaker 4: dinner down in Florida.
Speaker 3: How was that, Like, did they serve up fattening food
Speaker 3: or they don't do that with you.
Speaker 4: Probably shouldn't say too much about it, but it was
Speaker 4: all you could imagine and a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, let's talk about your own background.
Speaker 5: Where where were you born?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I was born in Bloomington, Indiana, So who's your by birth?
Speaker 4: But my dad was a grad student at IU at
Speaker 4: the time, and we quickly left and moved to California.
Speaker 4: My mom was from California, and I grew up in
Speaker 4: the Bay Area and then followed in their footsteps and
Speaker 4: went to Purdue University back in Indiana. So sort of
Speaker 4: like a like a bad penny, keep returning.
Speaker 2: To that state.
Speaker 3: So at the Kendy Center this weekend, we honored the
Speaker 3: Grateful Dad. You don't look like you're a person who's
Speaker 3: a grateful dead type person from so we were.
Speaker 2: You were in the Bay.
Speaker 3: Area, but you didn't get caught up in the grateful dead, right.
Speaker 4: I was a little younger than that that era, Okay,
Speaker 4: and I left Yeah, maybe in time to escape.
Speaker 5: That, right. So you went back to college where your
Speaker 5: father had gone to.
Speaker 3: School, yeah, and my mother yeah, okay, Purdue, Yeah, And
Speaker 3: what did you study there?
Speaker 4: So I started studying business and engineering, ended up with
Speaker 4: a degree industrial management which combines those two, and then
Speaker 4: went to work for IBM in New York, which I joined.
Speaker 4: It was stock wasn't an all time hime. When I left,
Speaker 4: it was an all time low. They had a tough
Speaker 4: time in the early nineties.
Speaker 5: Well you fixed that or turned it around?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Maybe? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So all right, so you went to join Eli
Speaker 5: Lilly in what year?
Speaker 4: So I left IBM to follow my girlfriend who's now
Speaker 4: my wife, who was going to medical school at Indiana University.
Speaker 4: So again back to Indiana, and I needed somebody to
Speaker 4: do there, so I decided to enroll in their MBA program,
Speaker 4: and I got an MBA. Of course, medicine's a four
Speaker 4: year degree, NBA's two. So I still needed somebody to
Speaker 4: do in Indiana, so I joined Lily.
Speaker 3: Okay, and what would you joined? What did you What
Speaker 3: was your position at the beginning?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was in the department that looked at M
Speaker 4: and A transactions in the finance and business development group
Speaker 4: and a great introduction to the.
Speaker 3: Did you ever say I'm going to be the CEO
Speaker 3: someday or something like that?
Speaker 2: Not then. I actually really was thinking I'll be here.
Speaker 4: For two years and then we'll be off to Chicago
Speaker 4: or San Francisco and do something different.
Speaker 2: But I fell in love with the company.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a it's an amazing place. It's a
Speaker 4: very humanistic culture, but yet very rigorous and scientific, so
Speaker 4: it's demanding smart people.
Speaker 2: But people are nice to each other.
Speaker 4: It's a Midwest and I fell in love with the mission,
Speaker 4: which is what could be better than making medicine for people?
Speaker 4: And I had an experience actually a few years in which,
Speaker 4: if I could share, I worked on a medicine to
Speaker 4: collaborate and bring into the company for diabetes. And right
Speaker 4: as I was leaving that job, my mother was diagnosed
Speaker 4: with diabetes and she was put on that medicine, and so,
Speaker 4: you know, the sort of the point of what we
Speaker 4: do just became super salient for me. And I said,
Speaker 4: this is not a bad way to spend my time.
Speaker 4: And I said to my wife, let's stay here in
Speaker 4: Indiana and she said really, and.
Speaker 2: We ended up staying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you realized that you were on a track to
Speaker 5: be the CEO? Was it?
Speaker 2: Ivy years post? Much later? Well?
Speaker 4: So I worked in that job, and then I had
Speaker 4: some jobs running markets. I ran our Canadian business, and
Speaker 4: I went to China for two and a half years
Speaker 4: and ran our Chinese business.
Speaker 2: And I was suddenly called back from.
Speaker 4: China by the CEO, who was a new CEO, and
Speaker 4: he said, you need to come run our US business
Speaker 4: and I said, yeah, I'm happy to do that at
Speaker 4: some point, but we were really in the middle of
Speaker 4: a growth phase there. We weren't done with the agenda
Speaker 4: I had set out and he had agreed to. I said, John,
Speaker 4: don't you want me to finish the job? He said,
Speaker 4: you need to come back. And I think that was
Speaker 4: the point where I was sort of being cultivated for
Speaker 4: big something bigger.
Speaker 5: So did you beat South some other person to get
Speaker 5: the job or no?
Speaker 4: I mean it's we've mostly hired people from within the company.
Speaker 4: There were other candidates, I'm sure when my predecessor retired
Speaker 4: and the board considered me, and I was lucky enough.
Speaker 2: To get it.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you now have three children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a while, I've had three children.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, they're young adults now, okay, yeah, all right,
Speaker 6: but are any of them interested in weight reduction programs
Speaker 6: or things like that? Really?
Speaker 4: Well, so, my son, he's an AI consultant, so not
Speaker 4: so much. My daughter is actually getting master's in sell
Speaker 4: biology and interested in med school, so she's thinking about
Speaker 4: medicine and medical science. And we talk a lot about
Speaker 4: the weight loss drugs and my youngest son is a
Speaker 4: geology student that Purdue, so we'll see what he does.
Speaker 3: And so what do you do for relaxation to stay
Speaker 3: in shape? You're not on one of these drugs, I
Speaker 3: think because you look very fit and exercise a lot
Speaker 3: of cuation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm not, but I would never hesitate to
Speaker 4: be on one if I needed it. But the best
Speaker 4: medicine is prevention. And so you know, paying attention to
Speaker 4: exercise is something I've always cared about.
Speaker 2: It's a way I reduced stress too. So I loved running.
Speaker 2: Now I don't run anymore, but I do other things.
Speaker 4: I like hiking, I love backcountry skiing and the outdoors,
Speaker 4: play golf. Being outside is where I find both fitness
Speaker 4: and peace. But then you know, also, I think it's
Speaker 4: important to watch what you eat. I think I've turned
Speaker 4: fifty seven years ago and we really needed to change
Speaker 4: what we That's what my wife and I decided, So
Speaker 4: we did, and it's I think been helpful to keep
Speaker 4: what do you eat?
Speaker 2: What do you eat?
Speaker 4: Things we recognize as food? Yeah, so basically things that
Speaker 4: haven't been through factories, and are you know you recognize
Speaker 4: that a farmer.
Speaker 3: Micro we've had an astounding success at ELI Lelly. Suppose
Speaker 3: a president of the United States said you should be
Speaker 3: the secretary of HHS or something like that, what would
Speaker 3: you say.
Speaker 4: I'm busy right now. I've never actually thought about that.
Speaker 4: I saw that on your question list. You served in
Speaker 4: the government. Maybe I could get some advice.
Speaker 3: I think you even advice for me because we didn't
Speaker 3: do too well. But but all right, so you're happy
Speaker 3: when you're you're so young.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to do, and you know, the company,
Speaker 4: as you've pointed out graciously, is really doing well. But
Speaker 4: you know, we really have a strong desire to do
Speaker 4: even more, and we're just at the beginning of this
Speaker 4: weight loss story. You know, right now there's six or
Speaker 4: seven million Americans who are taking these medicines. There are
Speaker 4: one hundred and ten million with obesity, and we need
Speaker 4: to build more plants and develop more data, get in
Speaker 4: better insurance coverage, and then there's the whole world to cover.
Speaker 4: It's projected in five years there'll be a billion people
Speaker 4: on the planet who have obesity, and it's going to
Speaker 4: become a much bigger problem in the developing world than
Speaker 4: it ever has been in America, partly because the rate
Speaker 4: of growth of obesity in India and China is much
Speaker 4: faster than we experienced, and populations that are non Caucasians,
Speaker 4: particularly South Asians, appear to be much more susceptible to
Speaker 4: chronic disease at lower weights. So we have a lot
Speaker 4: of work to do to make the biggest impact we
Speaker 4: can yew.
Speaker 3: The greatest obescit in the world is actually in those
Speaker 3: countries in South Pacific. The number one of the islands
Speaker 3: America semil that's right. The least obese is Ethiopia. Right,
Speaker 3: a lot of food, lot of wealth, and everybody's running marathon.
Speaker 5: So they lose weight.
Speaker 3: So okay, So today, where do you want to take
Speaker 3: your company? Now you can't find any drug it's going
Speaker 3: to be more successful than when you have is this?
Speaker 3: You're just going to keep promoting this drug? Is that
Speaker 3: your biggest thing? Or there's no other drug you I
Speaker 3: can imagine it would be anything comparable to this.
Speaker 2: Well, we can imagine that.
Speaker 4: And so we're trying to first of all, within the
Speaker 4: obesity metabolic health space. I think there's two things I'm
Speaker 4: very excited about. One is we have trzepetide mondros that
Speaker 4: found on the market. We have eleven other pipeline projects
Speaker 4: aimed at the same problem but in different ways. So
Speaker 4: we have a triple acting medicine that's in phase three
Speaker 4: for those that have even higher body weight or more
Speaker 4: severe health problems, we have the Oral Project, nine others.
Speaker 4: Beyond that, we think this is going to be a
Speaker 4: very large segment, with many different types of medicines for
Speaker 4: different conditions and different situations people might find themselves in.
Speaker 2: We're going to exploit that fully. The second thing is.
Speaker 4: We've talked a lot about like cardibasker health, diabetes, these
Speaker 4: conditions that one to think about with being overweight. But
Speaker 4: these medicines, we think and we aim to prove, can
Speaker 4: be useful for other things we don't think about connected
Speaker 4: to weight. These are often called anti hedonics, so they
Speaker 4: are reducing that desire cycle. So next year you'll see
Speaker 4: Lily start large studies and alcohol abuse and nicotine use,
Speaker 4: even in drug abuse, will also begin studies in anti
Speaker 4: inflammatory conditions because you don't think of that with weight,
Speaker 4: but actually there is quite a strong signal in anti inflammatory.
Speaker 4: And then beyond that, David, we need to make important
Speaker 4: medicines for the long haul or old company. We plan
Speaker 4: to be here another one hundred and fifty years plus.
Speaker 4: And I mentioned my excitement about brain health. I think
Speaker 4: that's really the next frontier to make a big difference.
Speaker 3: So if you ever thought about eating a lot, gaining weight,
Speaker 3: and then going to one of your drugs so you
Speaker 3: can actually experience it because you don't use it, because
Speaker 3: you don't you're so thin.
Speaker 4: I'd I'd like to avoid that, but it might happen,
Speaker 4: and I wouldn't hesitate to use them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yesterday you announced that fifteen billion dollars stock buy back.
Speaker 3: Many people criticize stock buybacks. They say you should use
Speaker 3: your money to invest in your products and so forth.
Speaker 5: How do you respond to that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't understand that argument.
Speaker 4: Really, a stock buyback is a way to essentially, by
Speaker 4: buying your own shares, you give the people who already
Speaker 4: own your shares the opportunity to sell at a higher
Speaker 4: price and get a return on their investment.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that's bad.
Speaker 4: But I would also point out, in our current situation,
Speaker 4: we're spending almost more than anyone in the world on
Speaker 4: R and D. Already, we'll spend eleven and a half
Speaker 4: billion dollars this year on research and development. By the way,
Speaker 4: the country of Germany spends about eight and a half
Speaker 4: billion on all of its medical R and D.
Speaker 2: That's their NIH equivalent.
Speaker 4: So we're at the nation state scale on R and
Speaker 4: D where we have announced investments of twenty three billion
Speaker 4: dollars in new capital in the United States.
Speaker 2: For factories, we can't go faster.
Speaker 4: There's no more vendors to build plants faster than we're
Speaker 4: building right now. So returning some of the rewards that
Speaker 4: investors deserve for taking risk on the company seems like
Speaker 4: a reasonable thing to do.
Speaker 3: So, Members of Congress, when you're in town, I assume,
Speaker 3: how do you find that experience uplifting?
Speaker 2: That wasn't the word I was going to use.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, at an individual level, we all love our congressman,
Speaker 4: and I think at an individual level they seem quite
Speaker 4: smart and rational people. Collectively, they don't seem to be
Speaker 4: able to act very rationally, but we're going to try
Speaker 4: to convince them to do so. I think there's a
Speaker 4: lot we can do. You know, it's a complicated world
Speaker 4: right now for global businesses like ours, there's a lot
Speaker 4: we could do that would make a pretty big difference.
Speaker 4: And it seems relatively easy to us, so we'll work
Speaker 4: with them to do that.
Speaker 3: Now, I assume you're very popular in Indiana because your
Speaker 3: company is very popular and you're a very nice person,
Speaker 3: your so forth. Have you ever thought of running for
Speaker 3: office yourself?
Speaker 4: Again, I have not considered public service at this point.
Speaker 4: I'm busy doing what I'm interested in. But we've been
Speaker 4: lucky in Indiana. We have a you know, it's a
Speaker 4: right leaning state, but we've a very common sense leadership.
Speaker 4: We've enjoyed good relationship there, so that hasn't come up.
Speaker 4: No one's tried to recruit me yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let me ask you finally, finally, on the
Speaker 3: drug that everybody's talking about. Is it difficult to get
Speaker 3: a doctor to prescribe that? Or if you do go
Speaker 3: in a doctor, you say you want it, doctor automatically
Speaker 3: gives it to or do you have to examine you
Speaker 3: and say you're a little overweight.
Speaker 2: They'll have to examine you.
Speaker 4: But it's a both and right now, our market studies
Speaker 4: are when people ask for either our drug or Novo's,
Speaker 4: about eight out of ten times they get it. It's
Speaker 4: a very consumer driven thing, and most doctors aren't resistant
Speaker 4: to it. When we launched that bound. You know, we
Speaker 4: just started advertising. That's an unusual thing. Usually you go
Speaker 4: out of the gates, you try to raise awareness, but
Speaker 4: there was so much online, a buzz and virality to this.
Speaker 2: We didn't really have to.
Speaker 4: Half the doctors writing the medicine in the United States
Speaker 4: right now, our medicine we've never spoken to. So usually
Speaker 4: you have like salesmen who go out people, we talk.
Speaker 5: To them free samples. You don't have to give free samples.
Speaker 4: We haven't done any free samples and half of them
Speaker 4: we haven't even spoken to yet. We need to speak
Speaker 4: to them to educate them on risk and benefits, but
Speaker 4: they're just spontaneously writing because consumers are asking them for it.
Speaker 4: It's a unique medicine.
Speaker 3: So has there ever been a drug anywhere in the
Speaker 3: United States that's as popular as this particular drug is
Speaker 3: sweeping the world and the country as anything like this
Speaker 3: and you've seen before.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I think both ours and our competitors' drugs will easily
Speaker 4: be the largest selling drugs in the US next year.
Speaker 2: And for a good reason.
Speaker 4: I'd say they Obviously, people when they begin taking them
Speaker 4: almost immediately feel better and they want to stay on them.
Speaker 4: We do lots of clinical trials and often people we
Speaker 4: randomize the PACEIBO so they don't know they're on the
Speaker 4: drug or not, and the people on the drug often
Speaker 4: drop out of the study at a high rate because
Speaker 4: you feel about the same when you're on most chronic medications,
Speaker 4: maybe have some side effects, but you don't notice your
Speaker 4: health improving. On these, you notice your health improving immediately.
Speaker 4: People have a scale in their bathroom. They step on
Speaker 4: it every day. They love losing weight. Physicians like it
Speaker 4: because the baseline of medical care is die in exercise,
Speaker 4: so when people aren't successful, it's frustrating. Here they can
Speaker 4: feel successful because people who are chronically overweight or even quite.
Speaker 2: Obese can lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 4: I had a letter this weekend I got from a
Speaker 4: lady who lived in Kansas.
Speaker 2: She's forty five years old.
Speaker 4: She weighed four hundred and twenty pounds, and she sent
Speaker 4: me the letter because yesterday she weighed one to eighty
Speaker 4: eight and she's been on our drug for two years
Speaker 4: and she was unsure if she was going to live
Speaker 4: to be fifty, and now she's sure she is. So
Speaker 4: this is imagine that at the nation's scale, we could
Speaker 4: change the trajectory of health care in the country with
Speaker 4: our invention.
Speaker 5: In that particular example.
Speaker 3: For example, hy somebody goes from four hundred plus pounds
Speaker 3: down their body organs must have been weakened by having
Speaker 3: that large weight for a long time, So even if
Speaker 3: they lose the weight, they're still not going to be
Speaker 3: as healthy as if they had never been obese.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, we don't know that.
Speaker 4: Actually, I think the body's proven to be pretty resilient. Obviously,
Speaker 4: she'll need to keep the weight off. She'll need to
Speaker 4: exercise and eat well and take good care of her health.
Speaker 4: But this particular person, for instance, had diabetes and no
Speaker 4: longer has clinical diabetes. It's not detectable, so actually her
Speaker 4: health is improving as she's losing the weight already.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a great American success story, and I congratulate
Speaker 3: you on pulling this off, and I hope you'll continue
Speaker 3: to find other drugs that are going to be as
Speaker 3: successful as this, And I can you know, I could
Speaker 3: use a couple of them myself Alzheimer's or whatever else
Speaker 3: I might need in the future. But thank you very
Speaker 3: much for being here, and thanks for the great story.
Speaker 2: Thanks David appreciate it ye