The pharmaceutical industry is taking another step toward what can only be described as the 'subscription body.' With the FDA approval of Eli Lilly’s new oral weight-loss pill, Foundayo, and Novo Nordisk’s launch of a multi-month subscription programme for Wegovy, we are witnessing the enclosure of human health. Instead of treating medicine as a means to restore the body to its natural state of stewardship, we are being sold a permanent lease on our own metabolism.

There is a profound moral danger in treating health as a recurring software update. When life-saving medications for heart health and obesity are gated behind monthly payments of $149 or $199, we create a tiered biological class system. Those who can afford the subscription are granted a high-tech reprieve from the consequences of the modern lifestyle, while those who cannot are left behind. This is not the progress of a healing art; it is the commercialization of the human flesh.

True health is a virtue of discipline, community, and the proper stewardship of the body as a temple. While these drugs can provide a genuine lifeline for those at risk of stroke or heart attack, we must resist the narrative that our well-being is something to be rented from a corporation. We should be wary of any system that makes our very survival dependent on a credit card transaction. Let us focus instead on building a culture that values the wholeness of the person, rather than the profitability of the patient.