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New exercise pill will strip us of our humanity

All aboard the Ozempic Express. Credit: Getty

October 11, 2024 - 7:00am

Researchers in Denmark claim they’ve developed a new drug that mimics the benefits of running. Currently known as LaKe, the molecule has been shown in lab rats to flush toxins and strengthen the heart. Speaking to the New York Post, lead chemist on the project Thomas Poulsen hailed its potential for those who desire the benefits of exercise but have injuries or a weak heart.

Is this good? If it happens, it’ll follow the Ozempic trajectory, in which we develop an ever-greater range of pills designed to “optimise” ourselves without effort. But doing so risks not just leaving ourselves politically and economically on the back foot, but also embracing an impoverished moral picture of ourselves — with side effects potentially far more consequential than just not going running.

Though people live courageously with illness and disability all the time, most intuitively grasp that, ceteris paribus, there is a link between physical and mental health. From the celebration of physical athletic prowess as expressions of civic virtue at the ancient Olympics, to the widespread adoption of the second-century Roman poet Juvenal’s phrase mens sana in corpore sano (“a healthy mind in a healthy body”), we’ve sensed that these dimensions of human wellbeing are intricately connected.

Multiple studies have shown, for instance, that exercise is at least as effective as medication for treating mild to moderate depression. This is more difficult to talk about, because to be modern is precisely to have abandoned, as Charles Taylor puts it, a “shared horizon” for what “health” means in the broadest sense, which is at root always more a moral idea than a biophysical one. This loss of a shared vision of the good only advances crude biological metrics for “health”, such as biochemistry or longevity — arguably better understood as effects of this elusive “health” than causes.

By contrast, older philosophies tend to offer a phenomenologically much richer account of health that includes its moral dimensions. We might (with Aristotle) stress moderation itself as a virtue — the “golden mean” — or (with the Christian ascetics) emphasise the importance of physical self-discipline in overcoming base desires.

From this perspective, a pill that produces the effect of physical health without requiring any psychological effort means, in effect, routing around what “health” actually means, which is a multi-faceted picture with moral, behavioural, and attitudinal dimensions as well as physical ones. The specific “benefits” the LaKe pill promises to replicate are metabolic, such as purging toxins and regulating appetite. And, speaking to the New York Post, Poulsen gave the game away: “It can be difficult to maintain motivation to run many kilometres at high speed and go without food.”

As a regular runner, I’m clearly not the target demographic for this innovation. But for me the “benefits” of running extend well beyond tinkering with my biochemistry, to a holistic sheaf of factors that improve my life both physically and mentally. Importantly, a central part of that is the habit-formation needed to sustain it. By the same token, in my experience mens sana in corpore sano is often a helpful signal for when habits need adjusting. Absent illness or disability, negative changes such as physical discomfort or weight gain are usually indicators that something is off in the overall picture. Invariably, too, the most effective long-term cure always addresses the whole picture, not just an isolated symptom.

When we accept, in principle, that pills which mimic some aspect of the physiology that results from a healthy overall lifestyle are a good substitute for the lifestyle itself, we’re also agreeing in principle that the gestalt picture doesn’t matter, or even doesn’t exist. This in turn leaves us not just swapping, for example, self-directed weight management for an expensive dependency on Ozempic, but also more broadly unable to make the political and moral case for transforming the world, in the name of human flourishing.

Who cares about food deserts and obesogenic lifestyles, when there’s a pill for weight management? LaKe would extend this logic: who cares if everyone has to work 18-hour sedentary days when there’s a pill that mimics going for a run? Human health, then, becomes a series of biophysical indicators that can be disaggregated and synthesised for a profit. While this may appeal to Novo Nordisk, and a few “biohackers” in the Bay Area, it leaves the rest of us with no language — barely even a conceptual framework — for defending our right to flourish as humans, rather than merely as optimised biomass.


Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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Jacqueline Walker
Jacqueline Walker
29 days ago

I wouldn’t worry too much. These things always have side effects because of the way they work tweaking one step in an incredibly complex set of metabolic interactions that we are only just beginning to understand.

Buck Rodgers
Buck Rodgers
28 days ago

Eventually we’re going to unleash the zombie apocalypse, aren’t we?

Brett H
Brett H
28 days ago

Not to mention that so many of these breakthroughs disappear without a trace. But it does raise the question; what do we actually want to be?

RA Znayder
RA Znayder
27 days ago

Indeed. In fact, many of such claims in the past simply appeared to be another amphetamine-like drug.

Ben Scott
Ben Scott
28 days ago

As a former ultramarathon runner, I embrace the concept that the harder the challenge, the greater the sense of achievement (and resultant flood of endorphins). If something is as easy as popping a pill, there is zero satisfaction and, I assume, one would be left with a hollow feeling and a yearning for something more tangible. I certainly would.

j watson
j watson
28 days ago

One suspects the marketing way out ahead of the proven benefits to the benefit of investors. The endorphin kick of exercise will be difficult to replicate too.
But if it did work? Some folks can’t exercise as easily – time/work pressures, joint problems, other mobility factors. Would it not then have utility with aging population and spiralling health care costs even if not as good as the real thing? What’s different from warfarin or statins, or a range of other medications? In UK NICE would currently have to do a cost/benefit assessment and that might be quite interesting.
Hope Author as keen on other public policy that tackles obesity and drives more exercise too.

Douglas Redmayne
Douglas Redmayne
28 days ago

If humanity means no reward without effort then technology that strips away humanity is a good thing. In a future world there may be robot servants and fully effective bespoke mood altering pills. People will welcome their “humanity” being stripped away in this context and you will be ignored as a mean spirited reactionary.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
28 days ago

Humans rarely respond like lab rats to drugs like this, so I don’t think this drug will make it to the market. But it does bring to mind the possibility of good intentions having bad effects. Like soma in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Or ethical birth control in “Welcome to the Monkey House” by Kurt Vonnegut.
Next thing you know there will be a pill that gives instant orgasms. Apparently, there already is one, but it doesn’t work well. Some takers of clomipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant drug marketed as Anafranil by Ciba-Geigy, have experienced yawn-induced orgasms as a side effect. Even deliberate, repeated yawns would do it for some people. O brave new world!
Anafranil, which is prescribed for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorders, has been available in the United States for decades. When the drug first came out, Linda Mayer, a spokeswoman for Ciba-Geigy, could not quantify the number of “yawngasm” reports. “We don’t really have specific numbers, other than our medical department has said it is rare,” Mayer said.
One woman said the drug cured her depression but she wanted to keep on taking it. I wonder why.
But before you run out for a prescription for clomipramine, know this: Only four cases were reported during the drug tests involving hundreds of patients, and fewer than 5% of clomipramine users report this side effect. A much more common side effect (more than 10%) is anorgasmia (delayed or lack of orgasm).
Rats.  

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
28 days ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

An indicator of female orgasm is a big yawn? I feel so much better now.

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
28 days ago

This outsourcing of personal effort is a collapse of boundaries. We risk being unwilling and unable to define ourselves as technology manages our impulses (gluttony and sloth in this instance) and upgrades our deficiencies (Musk believes neuralink will be mainstream within 20 years).

j watson
j watson
28 days ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

You got a dishwasher SG? Washing machine? Tumble dryer? Car as opposed to push bike?
Where we drawing the line?

Tara Fink
Tara Fink
28 days ago
Reply to  j watson

The body? We’ve become extraordinarily lazy and are getting dumber by the day. I’m sick of technology inserting itself in everything. (Also, get off my lawn! lol.)

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
28 days ago
Reply to  j watson

I haven’t had a dishwasher since moving house 20 years ago.

j watson
j watson
27 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

Sort yourself out RC for goodness sake. You could have more time on social media and internet sites rather than getting covered in fairy liquid.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
27 days ago
Reply to  j watson

That last sounds really gross.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
27 days ago
Reply to  j watson

You got a brain JW? Or is it a tumble dryer?

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
28 days ago

Apart from those unable to exercise effectively due to illness or disability, i can see this drug being useful for those spending long periods of time in space, where exercise in weightless conditions doesn’t have anything like the same amount of physical benefit.
Okay, it’s a very long way off yet, even though the tentative first steps are being taken aboard the ISS for instance, but in the long run, we’re going to have to take longer steps into space. Better to have these types of drugs available and thoroughly tested (there’s bound to be side effects, as with drugs such as statins) before that need arises.
MH is, of course, right about the more holistic benefits of regular exercise. It doesn’t even have to be anything requiring preparation: just walk faster. Get those joints moving, and don’t slow down much when on a hill to get the benefit of slight-to-moderate breathlessness.

Gregory Toews
Gregory Toews
28 days ago

Mary mentions “the ‘benefits’ of running extend well beyond tinkering with my biochemistry”. We’ll all have to decide whether we agree with an underlying cultural assumption there. If we want to hold to a material cosmology, we’re necessarily saying that Marys “benefits” ARE her biochemistry. Fancy us not thinking through what a material cosmology actually means. The even bigger irony being that a material cosmology says a purely material brain can’t invent, or discover, a material cosmology.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
28 days ago

The ‘reductive’ attitude toward our complex problems; reducing them to a series of separate data points, is proving to be a serious flaw in our scientific view of our lives.
On the other hand, that ‘reductive’ conception is essential to our digitization of everything. So it’s our well-being vs. our computers.
Somethings got to give.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
28 days ago

Am I the only one who was struck by the over use of pretentious latin quotes to say quotidian things?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
28 days ago

Ah, hacking human biology to get a desirable change without the usual working/waiting for it. How many times has this happened before?

There was the birth control pill that, starting in the sixties, aimed to give young women the chief benefit of chastity while still letting them sleep around. And after six decades of this supposed benefit, people are lonelier, and the relationships that they do have are usually shorter-lasting, than before.

And then there is drugging children for ADHD – basically, for conditions that a few decades ago nobody considered a mental illness at all, and the “solution” to inattentive children was to just provide them with more time to run about and/or work with their hands, and accept that no matter what you do, some of them are going to mature faster than others. I’ve written before at my own substack about the ugly effects of those pills:

https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/more-bat-research-or-when-not-to

https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/the-can-we-and-the-should-we-of-science

And then if you want to go really far back you get to the late Victorian Era, when it was briefly fashionable to give toddlers morphine for teething pains. (As I describe in detail in my second article.) Eventually people realized that this was a bad idea and stopped… but I suppose that if they shared our modern assumption that the only dimension to a drug’s morality is whether it works, then they never would have.

You can count on me never to take the running pill. Or Ozempic, for that matter. I prefer to keep running in real life, and I’m not worried that the people who choose otherwise are somehow going to outclass me.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
28 days ago

Aged 60 I walk 10-15 miles and lift weights, both twice a week. Despite remaining intractably 7-10lbs overweight, presumably because I eat like a hippo and enjoy beer, I’m not going to start pill-popping instead, because it would be no fun.

Alan Gore
Alan Gore
28 days ago

I don’t see any threat that a running pill will cause everyone to stop communing with nature. If it works, by eliminating the rote and boring kinds of exercise that people love to skip, it would improve our ability to swim, hike and ski when we do spend time outside.

Tony Coren
Tony Coren
28 days ago

At this rate the human race will soon be nothing but a load of pillocks

Kiddo Cook
Kiddo Cook
27 days ago

It won’t be long before everyone has surrendered all agency for a tent and toast….we’re pretty much Russians now; we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us …. Been happening for ages, it’s why theres so much despair, may be and I really hope, one day it will be realised that the old adage self interest is no interest, is true. Meanwhile fear of freedom will carry on paddling up the creek of anxiety to Nirvana

Jim M
Jim M
27 days ago

I’ll use it and exercise. Bring it to market!

0 01
0 01
27 days ago

If you’re going to run faster and longer, You’re still going to need to exercise. A strong heart needs to be supported by a strong body to be most effective. Maybe with traditional exercise combined with this drug you can actually get better results for yourself in a shorter amount of time. It might be good if you’re not a professional athlete and just somebody who needs to run in order to have better stamina during the day for work purposes like construction or policing, but your time poor due to othercommitments. With this drug you can get the desired results and benefits when mixed with traditional exercise with somewhat less time. Nothing truly beats the original.

James McKay
James McKay
26 days ago

The widespread, partial, and misleading adoption of Juvenal’s line, you mean – orandum eat it sit mens sana etc. means “a healthy mind in a healthy body is what one should pray for”, no implication that either one causes the other

Cristina Bodor
Cristina Bodor
26 days ago

Such a treat to read MH again!She invites us to reflect a little longer on the “ optimised biomass “ in feverish search for comfort, pleasure and with aversion for the slightest challenge.

Talia Perkins
Talia Perkins
17 days ago

“New exercise pill will strip us of our humanity”

I don’t know I have often heard more ridiculous pearl clutching, Karenesque claptrap in my life.

No, it will not you blithering idiot. Firstly, that is not even possible — we can not be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnitemporal, so we will always be human. We will always have limitations, be aware we have limitations, and be aware we don’t even know what all our limitations are — and find them by landing on our face.

This pill — this biochemical signalling substance — will be a tool which has some proper use, no more, no less.

“we’re also agreeing in principle that the gestalt picture doesn’t matter, or even doesn’t exist.”

No moron, we are not even suggesting that, or hinting at it. Or accepting that implicitly without realizing it. No more that than when we put on a pair of glasses. I strongly suspect your real objection is that because you feel okay with spending more time than some exercising and depriving yourself of some of the joy to be taken in food and drink, you feel yourself to be better than and above others who see and do differently, and you merely resent them maybe being able to buy those health benefits where you think yourself to be morally superior by working for those benefits.

You are not.

Get wrecked, Karen.