Nearly a year ago, news began to spread of an experimental weight loss drug called retatrutide, under development by Eli Lilly. Though the drug hadn’t made it through clinical trials, nevermind been released by a federally licensed manufacturer, a rapidly-growing black market ensured interested customers didn’t have to wait for the real deal.
Now, the bill on those black market knockoffs seems to be coming due. As CBS reports, the consequences of the unapproved retatrutide trade have now become deadly.
According to the broadcaster, the Food and Drug Administration has received at least two reports of deaths related to the use of bootleg retatrutide in recent months — the first public accounts from health officials acknowledging that the knockoffs contributed to users’ deaths.
Though CBS viewed documents related to the two deaths, it noted that the details haven’t been independently verified, and it remains to be seen whether the black market retatrutide was the principle cause of death in either case, or merely a complicating factor.
