I Bought ‘GLP-3’

A fter Katie started on Ozempic , she got her hairdresser interested, too. This summer, when they saw each other again, she thought that her hairdresser had lost some weight and that she looked “so great.” “Are you still on a GLP-1?” she asked, referring to the class of blockbuster drugs that includes Ozempic and obesity meds. “Actually,” her hairdresser replied, “I’m on a GLP-3. ” Okay, so, technically, there is no such thing as a GLP-3 drug. But “GLP-3” is a name used on the underground market for retatrutide, an obesity drug still being studied by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. As the nickname implies, retatrutide is like a GLP-1 drug—but more, more, more. It’s more effective, has more modes of action, and induces more weight loss. It may in fact be the most powerful weight-loss drug ever created. When early retatrutide data were presented at a medical conference in 2023 , a scientist who was there told me, the usually staid audience burst into spontaneous applause. Two weeks ago, the first of the highly anticipated Phase 3 clinical-trial results corroborated the jaw-dropping initial numbers: Patients lost on average 71 pounds, or 29 percent of their body weight —double what people lose on semaglutide, which is better known as Ozempic or Wegovy. Some trial participants stopped retatrutide early because they had lost too much weight; they stopped, in other words, because the drug was too effective . As of now, retatrutide is still not approved, though. The FDA has yet to subject its safety and efficacy data to close scrutiny. You cannot get retatrutide from your doctor. You cannot buy it at a pharmacy. “I’m a very by-the-book, ‘The doctor gives it to you; you take it’ kind of person,” Katie told me. ( The Atlantic agreed to identify some sources by their first names only for reasons of medical privacy.) When her hairdresser first mentioned retatrutide in the summer, the Phase 3 results weren’t even out. “But she was just like, ‘It was incredible ,’” Katie said. When she looked up retatrutide online, she came across people posting “insane” before-and-after photos. Katie, who is 44, had been prescribed Ozempic by her doctor two years ago, but she was ready for something new: Her co-pay had just shot up from $20 to $700 a month. She was nauseated all the time, but she wasn’t losing any more weight after stalling at 30 pounds. So with her hairdresser’s help, Katie began ordering freeze-dried retatrutide online, mixing the white powder with sterile water, calculating dosages, and injecting herself with needles. She paid only a fraction of what Ozempic had cost her. Six months later, she’s lost another 20 pounds. The catch, of course, is that her drugs do not come from Eli Lilly, nor do any of the drugs on the entirely unregulated underground market. No one is saying exactly where they do come from, but it’s commonly assumed that unnamed suppliers are copying Eli Lilly’s drug in China. Over the...

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