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Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Violence of whiteness laid bare in Trump-Ramaphosa meeting for all the world to see
This week marks two years since journalist and sociopolitical commentator Eusebius McKaiser died, a loss to both journalism and South Africa's critical intelligentsia community. I yearned to hear his unfiltered take on the humiliating events in the White House's Oval Office during the meeting between Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa. What unfolded there made me feel quite ill. McKaiser was never one to baulk at challenging racial prejudice and discrimination, particularly the weaponisation of whiteness, and that is exactly what we were made to endure on Wednesday, 21 May. The whole engagement enraged me, not only as a South African but also as a black woman watching the all-too-familiar dance of slave and master playing out live on international television, forcing our President to have to beg and perform for his humanity. No amount of cool, calm and factual interventions from his side stood a chance against the dismissive and irrational Trump onslaught. I guess that, at this point, these kinds of things should not still be eliciting such visceral reactions from me, as they have been happening since before I was born. My response, however, came from a sense of anger at the spectacle of white violence demonstrated by Trump, who could not be bothered to know the difference between African countries, never mind listen to the government delegation Ramaphosa led. Instead, he chose to listen to privileged white golfers and a fellow bullish businessman because they have more in common. I also found myself thinking that American people are the ones who gifted the world with Trump after electing him at the polls last November, something I attribute to a culture of worshipping celebrity and money as opposed to reason and moral values. The likes of Trump are what happens when a society lets popular culture dictate people's aspirations amid disinformation and fearmongering. A song titled This Is America by actor and musician Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino, has been playing in my head, illustrating this point. 'We just wanna party (yeah) Party just for you (yeah) We just want the money (yeah) Money just for you (you)… This is America Don't catch you slippin' now Don't catch you slippin' now Look what I'm whippin' now' Time magazine explained that, after Gambino's lighter 'We just wanna party, party just for you', 'things quickly take a darker turn… as he investigates just what that 'party' really means, alluding to everything from police violence to racial stereotypes and social media obsession as components of the modern American experience'. Though I was heartened by South African journalists' spirited defence of our country on various US news stations, what continued to gnaw at me was the bold-faced violence that is the constant psychological warfare against black people. The suffering of millions of black people tossed aside simply because of the colour of their skin and the elevation of 49 white lives defy any laws of logic. But in a world run by brash billionaires and celebrity adoration, what is even logical? DM This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Eric Church Says Las Vegas Shooting 'Broke' Him
Country singer Eric Church reflected on the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, saying it 'broke' him. 'It's still raw in a lot of ways, but it affects you,' Church said in a Sunday interview with 'Today.' 'It broke me in a way.' Church, who was one of the musical acts during the 2017 Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas, played his set Friday, Sept. 29, 2017. A few days later on Oct. 1, during Jason Aldean's set, a gunman opened fire from an above hotel room, killing 60 people and wounding hundreds more. It is the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history. Just a few days after the shooting, Church performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. During that performance, he performed the song 'Why Not Me' and dedicated it to the mass shooting victims. Church told the crowd he decided to go ahead with his Opry performance because of Heather Melton, one of his fans, whose husband died in the shooting. 'The reason I'm here tonight is because of Heather Melton,' Church said. 'What I saw, that moment in time that was frozen, there's no bullets that can take it away.' Church called the shooting 'indelible.' 'The relationship between the artist and the fans in that moment in time is sacred. And those bullets shattered that,' Church said on 'Today.' The shooting was the start of a bad year for Church, he said. In 2018, he had emergency surgery for a blood clot in his chest. Then in July 2018, Church's brother, Brandon, died. 'I think, up until that point, you can listen to the music, maybe, and you can see that I was brash, arrogant, in a lot of ways,' Church said on 'Today.' 'But it changes, when you have those things happen to you. And I think it made the music more humble and, maybe, more observant.' A Parkland And FSU Mass Shooting Survivor: 'This Is America' Country Star With Checkered Past Primed For Pardon
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
Illinois Fourth of July Parade Shooter Sentenced To Life 7 Times
The gunman who opened fire during a 2022 Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, in a mass shooting that killed seven was sentenced Thursday to seven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. 'The court finds he's irrevocably depraved,' Judge Victoria Rossetti said during the sentencing, according to NBC News. 'He is beyond any rehabilitation.' Robert Crimo III, who was not present during Thursday's sentencing, pleaded guilty last month to 21 counts of murder, three for each of the seven people who died, and 48 counts of attempted murder. After evidence was presented, victims read their impact statements. 'You took my mom,' said Leah Sundheim, the child of Jacquelyn Sundheim, according to The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. 'I will never be able to summarize how simply extraordinary she was, and how devastating and out of balance my life is without her.' Keely Roberts' son Cooper Roberts was 8 when he was shot in the back during the mass shooting and became paralyzed from the waist down. Keely Roberts called the shooter 'cowardly' for not attending the sentencing. 'You will not get my sad stories,' she said. 'You have no power over my life.' Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart said in a news conference Thursday that the sentencing was about the victims, survivors and the Highland Park community. 'The amount of trauma and pain that they have gone through in this case is something that is hard to describe,' Rinehart said. He continued, saying the shooter has 'never shown one bit of remorse.' 'It was clear he was unable to confront what he had done,' Rinehart said about the shooter not showing up for his sentencing. Nancy Rotering, the mayor of Highland Park, Illinois, said at the news conference that the sentencing is another call to action for lawmakers to 'take decisive action to prevent future tragedies.' 'No community should ever have to endure this kind of devastation,' Rotering said. On July 4, 2022, the shooter opened fire with a rifle from a nearby rooftop during Highland Park's annual Fourth of July parade. The mass shooting killed seven people and injured 48 more and the shooter was arrested about eight hours after the shooting began. Victims of the shooting ranged in ages 8 to 88. The shooter's father was also charged in connection to the shooting. Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty in November 2023 to seven counts of misdemeanor reckless conduct for helping his then-teenage son get a firearms license to buy guns. He served 60 days in prison and is still on two years of probation. The shooting resulted in lawsuits, including one from the victims who sued Smith and Wesson, the manufacturer of the rifle used in the shooting, for allegedly targeting its ads to young men who might commit mass violence. The case is ongoing. California Judge Found Guilty Of Shooting Wife While Watching 'Breaking Bad' A Parkland And FSU Mass Shooting Survivor: 'This Is America' Parkland Victim's Dad Shares Gut-Wrenching Discovery After Florida State Shooting
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Hims & Hers' off-brand weight loss drugs made a Super Bowl splash. Here's what to know
Over 100 million Americans watched Hims & Hers (HIMS)' controversial Super Bowl ad taking on the weight-loss drug industry this Sunday during the Super Bowl. The ad took a surprisingly political tone — with Donald Glover's 'This Is America' as its soundtrack — criticizing the high price tag of branded weight-loss drugs. 'Welcome to weight loss in America — a $160 billion industry that feeds on our failure,' said a narrator in the commercial. 'There are medications that work — but they are priced for profits, not patients.' The adbriefly featured the company's GLP-1 injections. The weekly treatment contains compounded or off-brand semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk's (NVO) popular diabetes and weight-loss treatments Ozempic and Wegovy. Where the controversy comes is that, unlike Wegovy ads, the Hims & Hers spot did not include a list of risk disclaimers. Several industry groups and lawmakers called the commercial misleading and urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take action against the ad. Meanwhile, Hims & Hers said the backlash was 'a clear attempt by industry groups to cancel an advertisement that directly calls out how they are part of a system that fails to prioritize the health of Americans.' Here is everything you need about Hims & Hers' compounded weight-loss drugs. Compounding is the process of customizing an approved drug by a state-licensed pharmacist or physician to meet the specific needs of an individual patient. The alterations of these medications can include making a higher dosage, reformulating a drug to not include ingredients a patient may be allergic to, and changing a pill into liquid form. Outsourcing facilities can also compound drugs under the supervision of a licensed pharmacist. There are about 7,500 pharmacies in the United States that focus on compounded drugs, according to the American Pharmacists Association. Typically, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act prohibits compounding drugs that are just copies of commercially available medications. However, drugs that are in shortage are not considered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be commercially available. Wegovy is currently in shortage due to increased demand, according to an FDA database. Because of this, compounders are allowed to buy semaglutide from drug ingredient makers to compound it into injectable formulations. These formulations could be mixed with B vitamins or L-carnitine. Hims & Hers in May began offering customers compounded semaglutide injections for just $199 a month — hundreds of dollars cheaper than Ozempic's nearly $1,000 list price and Wegovy's $1,349 price tag. The compounded formulations are not FDA-approved, so the agency does not review the safety and efficacy of these products The FDA said last year that it had received adverse event reports from patients taking a compounded semaglutide and recommended that patients not use a compounded drug if an approved drug is available. The agency specifically warned about reports of some compounders using salt forms of semaglutide — which is different from the semaglutide used in approved products like Wegovy — in their formulations. For its part, Hims & Hers said they conducted exhaustive research and vetting for over a year before partnering with a leading U.S. manufacturer of generic and compounded drugs. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
10-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
What is compounded semaglutide and is it safe? The weight loss drugs Hims & Hers is selling, explained.
"They're priced for profits, not patients.' That's the critique from Hims & Hers Health's buzzy — and controversial — Super Bowl ad, leveling the accusation against brand-name weight loss drugs. Set to the tune of Childish Gambino's 'This Is America,' the 60-second spot, which reportedly cost between $14 million and $16 million to air during the big game, is plugging 'affordable' versions of these medications, known as compounded GLP-1s (short for 'glucagon-like peptide-1'). GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy are expensive, with a month's supply of Ozempic costing around $1,000 without insurance, on average, according to Hims & Hers' ad takes the issue head-on, but the more affordable solution the company offers falls under murky territory. Cheaper, compounded GLP-1s, often sold by online providers including, in addition to Hims & Hers, Ro, Eden and Weight Watchers, are legal and contain the same active ingredients as their pricier counterparts. But what makes them different is that they aren't regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in the same way as noncompounded medications. Some call these medications 'generic Ozempic' (they're not); others, 'fake Ozempic' (nope, except when the ads are for illegal or nonexistent drugs). And last year, the FDA issued warnings about the drugs, but they haven't been recalled and remain readily available. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. So, what is going on with compounded semaglutide, and is it safe? How can you tell the difference between compounded and counterfeit drugs? It's complicated. Let's get into it. Compounded semaglutide is a legal copycat of the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. Normally, it would be illegal to make generic versions or copies of these medications until the patents for the drugs expire. But in special circumstances, including shortages, compounding pharmacies are permitted to manufacture otherwise protected drugs in order to meet demand. Compounding pharmacies are required by law to follow the exact recipes provided by brand-name drugmakers when producing copies of their medications. So if all goes well, compounded medications should be identical to the brand-name ones. However, compounded medications aren't regulated with the same FDA testing as others, although these pharmacies are required to use ingredients manufactured by FDA-registered facilities. The second, more obvious distinction between noncompounded semaglutide (the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic) and compounded semaglutide is how the drugs are administered. Ozempic and Wegovy come in special injector pens that make it easy to get the dosing right. But the company that makes those drugs, Novo Nordisk, has the exclusive right to make those injector pens. So compounded semaglutide is sold in a vial with a separate syringe. Compounding drugs isn't a new practice. But due to the soaring demand for these weight loss drugs, it's now a mainstream phenomenon. Semaglutide has been on the market for 20 years, but it was approved by the FDA in 2021 for chronic weight management. Since then, Novo Nordisk (Wegovy and Ozempic) and Eli Lilly (Mounjaro and Zepbound) have struggled to manufacture enough product and both of Novo Nordisk's semaglutide medications have been on the FDA's shortage list since early 2022. Wegovy and Ozempic — both known generically as semaglutide — were taken off the FDA's shortage list in late October 2024. One FDA page now lists semaglutide as 'in shortage,' while another says that all doses are available. The shortage of tirzepatide, the drug used in Mounjaro and Zepbound, is now marked 'resolved.' Some experts think this will make it much harder to get compounded versions of the drug. Compounding pharmacies are allowed to make copies of drugs in large batches only when they are in shortage. The FDA also permits compounding pharmacies to make 'bespoke medications customized for a particular patient,' explains Scott Brunner, CEO of the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding. As previously stated, compounded drugs are legal to make and prescribe so long as they are in shortage. So as one problem, a shortage, is solved, another arises: Cheaper copycat drugs fall into an even grayer area of legality. And it's unclear what the end of shortages will mean for Hims & Hers' campaign to offer these cheaper options to their clientele. It's hard to pin down exactly how many Americans are taking compounded versions of Ozempic and similar drugs because companies prescribing them keep data close to the chest. A poll last year estimated that as many as 1 in 8 Americans had taken some form of these blockbuster drugs, but didn't differentiate between FDA-approved and compounded medications. The CEO of one large compounding company, Olympia Pharmaceuticals, told CBS News that some 2 million Americans are taking drugs made by firms like his. Compounded drugs are often cheaper, in part because they don't require the same expensive research, development and clinical trials that noncompounded prescriptions do. For example, telehealth company Hers advertises injection compounded semaglutide for a starting price of $165 per monthly supply; the same company charges $1,999 for 30 days' worth of Wegovy, without insurance. Many telehealth companies have seized on the opportunity to prescribe blockbuster drugs to a huge swath of people; one study estimated that over 137 million Americans are eligible to receive semaglutide. Telehealth companies offer medical consultations — which are required to get a GLP-1 prescription — and reap the profits from both the appointments and the medications. Sometimes these consultations involve a virtual meeting with a health care provider. But other companies, including Hims, reportedly prescribe GLP-1s on the basis of short surveys and never require patients to speak with anyone. (In a statement to Yahoo Life, Hims & Hers says they 'provide a telehealth platform that connects customers with licensed healthcare providers who evaluate and prescribe treatment when appropriate, including compounded medication if clinically necessary. We stand by the quality of care we deliver and are confident that we actually inform our customers better given how closely we work with them through our platform.') Many consumers, in turn, have jumped at the chance to get cheaper weight loss drugs from virtual providers who may do less to verify that patients meet the prescribing criteria, as Wired reported. Regulators' concerns about these drugs fall into two categories: what's in them and how easily someone can overdose. The FDA has cautioned about 'impurities,' the use of an untested 'salt' form of semaglutide in compounded drugs, and 'adverse events,' which encompass everything from mild side effects like nausea to life-threatening reactions and even death. Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, said that 442 cases of adverse events, including 99 hospitalizations and seven deaths, had been reported to the FDA in connection with compounded semaglutide as of March 31, 2024, the New York Times reports. Brunner says that the fact that these figures come from Novo Nordisk makes the findings biased. (For what it's worth, Yahoo Life requested data to verify these numbers from the FDA but had not received any further information by the time of publication.) Ultimately, the problem isn't that compounded drugs are definitively unsafe; it's that there aren't the same guardrails and regulations in place to make sure that they are safe, whereas the FDA tightly governs noncompounded drugs. Instead, the compounding industry is governed by a separate set of standards, which require pharmacies to routinely test their ingredients and products for quality, strength and purity. Still, some experts aren't convinced that that's enough to guarantee safety. 'Since they're not regulated like manufacturing facilities, you have no idea what you're getting,' Justin Ryder, an associate professor of pediatrics who researches obesity at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Lurie Children's Hospital, tells Yahoo Life. The FDA also issued a warning about overdoses of compounded semaglutide in late July. Brand-name forms of semaglutide, including Wegovy and Ozempic, come in specially designed injector pens, which help to ensure that patients get the correct dose. Compounded semaglutide comes in a vial with a standard syringe that patients fill and inject themselves. That may make it easier for patients to accidentally inject too much of the drug. In some cases, patients were getting up to 20 times more of the drug than they should have, either because they were injecting themselves with larger doses than intended or because their prescribers were 'miscalculating' the dose. In one case, a provider intending to prescribe 0.25 milliliters instead wrote 25 units, which comes out to five times more medication. This resulted in the patient experiencing severe vomiting. Whatever risks compounded semaglutide may or may not carry, it's a separate issue from counterfeit medications. However, it might be easy to confuse the two when browsing for a provider online. According to a recent JAMA Network Open study, nearly half of online pharmacies trying to sell 'semaglutide' are illegal operations. 'Unfortunately, I'm not surprised at all' by how common counterfeits are, study co-author and University of California, San Diego professor of global health Tim Mackey tells Yahoo Life. 'Any time a product like this becomes popular through media or through patients [sharing their results], you're going to get a counterfeit market that arises.' Notably, none of the six fraudulent companies he and his team tried to place orders with required prescriptions for semaglutide, which is illegal, nor did they offer prescriptions as a legitimate telehealth company would. Only three companies actually shipped any product at all, while the other three requested money for customs, a common scam tactic, Mackey says. The products the researchers did receive were impure, potentially contaminated or contained much higher concentrations of semaglutide than their labels indicated, posing a serious risk of overdose. The safest thing to do is always to use an FDA-approved medication. In this case, that means Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro or Zepbound. Even Brunner, who represents compounding pharmacies, urges that if these brand-name versions are available, you should not use compounded semaglutide instead. Second, real medications — compounded or not — will always require a prescription. So if you happen upon a website that says you can skip that step, it's definitely not legitimate, warns Mackey. If you cannot get the dose of brand-name semaglutide that you need, there are some steps you can take to get some sense of how likely it is that the compounded doses you receive will be safe. First of all, ask your prescriber where they will be sending the prescription to be filled and how long they've been working with that pharmacy, says Brunner. Once you have the pharmacy's name, you can check that it's registered with the FDA; that's a good sign that it's trustworthy. If you still have reservations, don't be afraid to call the pharmacy and ask questions, like whether third parties test the ingredients they use and if the pharmacy makes and tests large batches of drugs, Brunner advises. If you can't find the pharmacy's name before receiving the medication, the packaging should include the facility's name, so these same checks can be done. It's not guaranteed that that information will be available, but at least some companies — including, as of August, Hims & Hers — are promising to provide better transparency.
