An easy-to-read summary of just what the subtitle suggests — benefits and risks — though there are a couple of points about which I think he’s wrong. And the amount of digressive fluff... implies this could have easily been a long magazine article rather than a short book ... Hari’s reputation, as well as his sloppiness, casts a shadow over even the most poignant portions of the book ... Though the book is pleasant and informative, it consistently makes aha moments out of familiar concepts.
Like so many who start to research our relationship with food for the first time, Hari is blown away by what he finds, and honest enough to recount it unadorned ... Magic Pill is a wonderfully accessible exploration of one of the most complex problems of our age. Hari highlights the risks of the new drugs, but also their benefits ... If I have a criticism of the book, it’s that, like so many of his generation, Hari doesn’t push hard enough for a political fix to the tsunami of ultra-processed foods that are sickening us.
[Hari] skillfully explores the effectiveness and the risks of Ozempic—as well as Wegovy and Mounjaro—and vividly depicts the food environment that has created a need for them ... One great strength of Magic Pill is Mr. Hari’s measured approach.
Sometimes Hari is still a little free and easy. Not only with irrebuttable speculations about future, as yet unknown side-effects, but also with his citations ... If I have a genuine quibble with the book, it’s how frequently a key pivot follows a chance social meeting with a friend, whose surname is never given, and whose extensive quotes, perfectly recalled, then act as an almost perfect setup for the next chapter. Even if he didn’t have a history of quotation-shenanigans, I would still want an explanation of how this worked ... He is a highly skilled writer who has tried very hard to make this book readable.
It presents a vexed debate reasonably fairly. It never quite tips into scaremongering, despite a tendency to foreground low-probability risks. On the negative side, it’s content-light for a scientific book, and Hari’s breathless style grates somewhat ... Hari has a history. In 2012 he left his columnist job at the Independent after it was revealed he had stolen quotes and libelled rivals via online sockpuppet accounts ... So I went through the references even more carefully than I normally would, to see if the studies backed up his points. Not all of them did.
In addition to his personal story, Hari chronicles his travels around the world interviewing users, researchers, physicians, and the drug’s developers, pausing for thoughtful essays on why we eat and overeat, why dieting almost never works, and how the world may change when these drugs become affordable ... A sober exploration of weight-loss pills that actually work.
