And now to the battle of the bulge and that new generation of weight-loss drugs:<\/p>\n
TIM DAVIES: Ozempic and Mounjaro have revolutionised weight loss with half a million Australians now using them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Nine, 29 Nov 2025<\/p>\n
Nine\u2019s Today show has brought the story of these marvels of medicine to breakfast tables across the country sometimes wheeling in its resident medico Dr Nick Coatsworth:\u00a0<\/p>\n
ALISON PIOTROWSKI: This is fascinating, half-a-million Aussies now using these drugs. Are you surprised by that number?<\/p>\n
DR NICK COATSWORTH: I\u2019m not really surprised. I\u2019ll tell you why Ally, it\u2019s because these drugs are really so effective at what they do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Nine, 29 Nov 2025<\/p>\n
Effective yes, but not a magic bullet and not appropriate for all, as Coatsworth made clear:<\/p>\n
DR NICK COATSWORTH: You\u2019ve gotta remember if you don\u2019t have diabetes, if you\u2019re not carrying large amounts of weight, then there are side effects associated with the drugs \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Nine, 29 Nov 2025<\/p>\n
Though his focus, he told viewers, is on how to ensure the drugs are reaching those in genuine need:\u00a0<\/p>\n
DR NICK COATSWORTH: I\u2019m more interested in the people with real health problems who aren\u2019t actually getting these medications and how we get it out to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Nine, 29 Nov 2025<\/p>\n
So should the government underwrite these drugs for more Australians and not just those with type 2 diabetes?\u00a0<\/p>\n
DR NICK COATSWORTH: We would not be the only government in the world to go down the path of subsidising these \u2026 there\u2019s probably no better way to discuss preventative medicine than discussing weight loss within the community \u2026\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Nine, 29 Nov 2025<\/p>\n
As it turns out, Channel Nine’s go-to physician has appeared a number of times talking about the use of these weight-loss drugs and their potential side effects not just on Today but also A Current Affair:\u00a0<\/p>\n
DR NICK COATSWORTH: We know they work incredibly well for diabetics, we now know that they are very powerful weight loss drugs \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
A Current Affair, Nine, 13 Sep 2024<\/p>\n
And on Nine\u2019s 4pm news bulletin, once more suggesting the use of taxpayer funds to force down the price of these drugs so people can get them who can\u2019t presently afford them:<\/p>\n
ELIZA RUGG: \u2026 do you back these calls for the drugs to be subsidised on the PBS for those with obesity not just for those with diabetes?<\/p>\n
DR NICK COATSWORTH: \u2026 if we\u2019re having portions of our population that don\u2019t have access to the drugs then we seriously need to consider government funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nine Afternoon News (Melb), 2 Dec 2025<\/p>\n
But Channel Nine forgot to tell viewers about one piffling little detail which was explained quite nicely by its stablemate the Australian Financial Review:<\/p>\n
The former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth \u2026 is now a paid clinical governance adviser to Eucalyptus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Australian Financial Review, 5 Jan 2024<\/p>\n
A telehealth company that:<\/p>\n
\u2026 has tied itself to the weight loss drug Ozempic more effectively than any other in Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Australian Financial Review, 5 Jan 2024<\/p>\n
Missing from Nick Coatsworth\u2019s official and rather impressive Nine biography is his appointment in mid-2023 as a paid adviser to Eucalyptus which last year turned over hundreds of millions of dollars flogging, yes, weightloss programs like Juniper, which comes in a fancy box that contains health coaching, meal plans, a set of sleek new scales and yes pharmaceuticals by injection that sadly Eucalyptus is barred by law from marketing directly to customers:<\/p>\n
\u2026 due to Australian Therapeutic Goods regulations, we are unable to discuss specific treatment options until your consult with one of our Juniper practitioners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Juniper, FAQs<\/p>\n
But only until then.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Juniper is marketing its product like this:<\/p>\n
EMMA: \u2026 we don\u2019t have the time to go to the gym all the time. I love Juniper \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
CAROLE MALONE: And my husband said to me one day, you know I said I would always love you no matter how fat you got. And I said yeah. And he said \u2018Well how fat are you intending to get?<\/p>\n
Juniper, 7 Mar 2025<\/p>\n
With the help of these public service announcements Eucalyptus has served more than 700,000 customers according to the US giant which last month snapped up the company for more than one billion US dollars.<\/p>\n
Great news for everyone or not everyone:<\/p>\n
Woman hospitalised after Juniper prescribes weight-loss drugs her GP refused<\/p>\n
ABC News Online, 1 Feb 2026<\/p>\n
CLAIRE MUNCH: I was able to fill out a questionnaire and it asked if I\u2019d ever had a previous eating disorder, which I disclosed that I did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2026 at the end of the questionnaire I was accepted – no questions asked – and I was then sent the medication \u2026\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
ABC News, 1 Feb 2026<\/p>\n
After months on and off in hospital the company apologised to Claire and promised to better adhere to official healthcare guidelines.<\/p>\n
But it doesn\u2019t seem to love Australia\u2019s consumer protections, bemoaning in this November 2025 Facebook post that it was:<\/p>\n
\u2026 limited in what I can say here thanks to some pesky Aussie laws\u00a0\ud83d\udc40\u00a0\ud83d\ude02\u00a0<\/p>\n
ABC News Online, 29 Dec 2025<\/p>\n
And a few years ago, shrugging off the concerns of drug regulators and the Royal Australian College of GPs by pushing ahead with the sale of \u2018unapproved\u2019 replica meds to get around a shortage of the real thing.<\/p>\n
When Nick Coatsworth penned what we should say is a\u00a0very balanced piece in the AFR in January last year there was this handy disclosure:<\/p>\n
Nick Coatsworth \u2026 is a paid adviser on quality and safety for weight loss drugs to the telehealth company Eucalyptus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Australian Financial Review, 6 Jan 2025<\/p>\n
And yet, the majority of Nine\u2019s viewers have been none the wiser because of his 10 television appearances that we\u2019ve seen discussing weight loss drugs, including those sold by Eucalyptus, we could only find this one single disclosure almost two years ago:<\/p>\n
NICK COATSWORTH: Well I actually sit on the clinical governance advisory committee of Eucalyptus which does sell Ozempic to Australians and other weight loss drugs \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Nine, 14 Mar 2024<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Eucalyptus told us Coatsworth is not paid to promote its products, and:<\/p>\n
It is a matter for Dr Coatsworth to make whatever disclosures he considers appropriate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Email, Eucalyptus Spokesperson, 27 Feb 2026<\/p>\n
But sadly, neither Nick Coatsworth nor Channel Nine wanted to discuss just how appropriate their disclosures have been of the high-profile medico\u2019s conflict of interest.<\/p>\n
The bloke who held our hand through those rather dark years of the pandemic Nick Coatsworth is of course entitled to earn a buck any way he sees fit, but when he appears on our screens suggesting tax dollars might be poured into subsidising a weight loss product, however medically justified his opinion might be, I rather think it behoves him and Nine to remind us he\u2019s copping a pay cheque from a company selling it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And now to the battle of the bulge and that new generation of weight-loss drugs: TIM DAVIES: Ozempic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[102,6591,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-456463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-health","tag-medication","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}