{"id":22323,"date":"2025-02-16T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22323"},"modified":"2025-02-16T10:23:45","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:23:45","slug":"on-a-mission-to-heal-gila-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22323","title":{"rendered":"On a Mission to Heal Gila Monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By any measure, the diabetes drug Ozempic has been a blockbuster, racking up billions of dollars in annual sales. In the United States alone, pharmacies fill millions of prescriptions for Ozempic and related drugs, which have become popular for their weight-loss effects, every month.<\/p>\n

But in the beginning, before the celebrity endorsements and the think pieces and the global supply crunch, there was just a strange, venomous lizard with a flair for intermittent fasting. The Gila monster, which is native to the deserts of North America, can survive on just a few meals a year, thanks to a digestion-slowing hormone in its venom.<\/p>\n

The discovery of this hormone paved the way for Ozempic, making the Gila monster an enormously profitable gift to modern medicine. And last summer one particular Gila monster, a former pet named Pebbles, needed medicine in return.<\/p>\n

Pebbles, a resident at the Creature Conservancy, a wildlife education organization in Ann Arbor, Mich., had been infected with a parasite called Cryptosporidium. Hard to kill, the parasite <\/span>colonizes the digestive tract and is typically a death sentence for reptiles. <\/p>\n

A veterinarian had recommended that Pebbles be humanely euthanized. But the Creature Conservancy wasn\u2019t ready to accept that fate for Pebbles, who had at least another decade of life potentially ahead of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can fix her,\u201d said Steve Marsh, the founder of the Creature Conservancy, one afternoon last July. <\/p>\n

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By any measure, the diabetes drug Ozempic has been a blockbuster, racking up billions of dollars in annual sales. In the United States alone, pharmacies fill millions of prescriptions for Ozempic and related drugs, which have become popular for their weight-loss effects, every month.But in the beginning, before the celebrity endorsements and the think pieces and the global supply crunch, there was just a strange, venomous lizard with a flair for intermittent fasting. The Gila monster, which is native to the deserts of North America, can survive on just a few meals a year, thanks to a digestion-slowing hormone in its venom.The discovery of this hormone paved the way for Ozempic, making the Gila monster an enormously profitable gift to modern medicine. And last summer one particular Gila monster, a former pet named Pebbles, needed medicine in return.Pebbles, a resident at the Creature Conservancy, a wildlife education organization in Ann Arbor, Mich., had been infected with a parasite called Cryptosporidium. Hard to kill, the parasite colonizes the digestive tract and is typically a death sentence for reptiles. A veterinarian had recommended that Pebbles be humanely euthanized. But the Creature Conservancy wasn\u2019t ready to accept that fate for Pebbles, who had at least another decade of life potentially ahead of her.\u201cIf we can fix her,\u201d said Steve Marsh, the founder of the Creature Conservancy, one afternoon last July. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22325,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22323"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22326,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22323\/revisions\/22326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}