A patient in Indianapolis displays a small, plastic injection pen, the latest tool in a pharmaceutical arms race that promises to transform the human body. Eli Lilly recently unveiled data showing that an experimental weight-loss drug helped people shed 28 percent of their body weight, a result that rivals the effects of gastric bypass surgery. As the stock price for these companies climbs, CVS Health has announced plans to broaden coverage for these treatments. The promise of a chemical cure for obesity is being hailed as a miracle of modern science.

Yet, this miracle comes with a quiet price. While the drugs offer a path to health for many, they also represent the further medicalization of the human experience. The conversation in the halls of power and the medical journals focuses on "access" and "growth," but it rarely mentions the virtues of temperance and physical discipline. We are moving toward a world where health is a subscription service, gated behind corporate drug plans and chemical interventions.

There is a risk that we are trading the hard-won character of self-improvement for the ease of the needle. The Washington Post noted that while the numbers are stunning, many express skepticism about the role of the food industry in creating the very crisis these drugs now claim to solve. We have built a world that makes us sick and now offer a billion-dollar cure that requires no change of heart, only a steady supply of medicine.

True health is rooted in the way we live, the food we share, and the discipline we exercise over our own impulses. As these drugs become a permanent fixture of our society, we must ask what we are losing in the exchange. A body maintained by a laboratory is not the same as a body maintained by a life well-lived. We should celebrate the relief of suffering, but we should mourn the loss of the idea that we are responsible for our own stewardship.