Here’s a blind item worthy of TMZ: Who exactly is the 79-year-old person with apparent government connections who obtained clandestine access to an experimental weight loss drug?
On Tuesday, STAT News reported that such an individual recently secured a “compassionate use” exception to be prescribed Eli Lilly’s retatrutide, a medication expected to be the most potent GLP-1-based drug yet. The outlet asked the White House if President Donald Trump was this person, only to reportedly be met with a non-answer. Though the White House has since denied that the application was for Trump, the saga does raise questions about why an undisclosed person seemingly received special treatment.
The mystery of the retatrutide patient
According to three anonymous sources interviewed by STAT News reporter Lizzy Lawrence, the mystery patient obtained retatrutide through the compassionate use program established by the Food and Drug Administration (formally, it’s called expanded access). As the FDA describes it, the program can allow someone with “a serious or immediately life-threatening disease or condition to gain access to an investigational medical product for treatment outside of clinical trials when no comparable or satisfactory alternative therapy options are available.”
The request was made by a senior clinician at the National Institutes of Health named Ranganath Muniyappa, STAT reported. The request was for a patient described as having refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea as well as pulmonary hypertension, a type of high blood pressure affecting the lungs and the right side of the heart. The patient was recorded as 79 years old at the time the request was made in April. Muniyappa reportedly noted that the patient had been taking tirzepatide for a year, an approved GLP-1-based drug, but only showed modest weight loss, and he recommended against bariatric surgery due to the patient’s age and existing health conditions.
Trump turned 80 last week. And Lawrence directly reached out to the White House to ask if Trump was this patient but was reportedly redirected to the Health and Human Services Department by White House spokesperson Kush Desai. Neither HHS nor Eli Lilly disclosed the identity of the recipient. In response to a question about whether Trump had sleep apnea or pulmonary hypertension, Desai reportedly stated that a recent White House memo detailing Trump’s latest medical check-up covered this; the memo did not state he had either condition.
Because this has to be spelled out for @LizzyLaw_, who has proven herself to be an unserious gossip columnist, this application was not for the President. https://t.co/TjUOSWISmx
— Kush Desai (@KushDesai47) June 23, 2026
Soon after the STAT report broke, Desai went on social media to issue a more explicit denial. Calling Lawrence a gossip columnist, Desai said that “this application was not for the President.” And it is also worth noting that Trump himself said that he was not taking a GLP-1 when asked by the media earlier this January, though he did go on to say that he “probably should.”
Why this is fishy
Of course, it’s understandable why some people might not want to take the White House at its word, given the lengthy history of misinformation propagated by the administration and Trump himself. Many people have also cast doubt on the White House, explaining away Trump’s chronically bruised hands as merely a side effect of taking too much aspirin and shaking too many hands.
But even if Trump isn’t the mystery retatrutide patient, there are still ethical questions raised by the STAT report.
As noted above, the compassionate use program is typically intended to obtain experimental drugs for life-threatening, if not likely terminal, health conditions, which doesn’t really fit the bill for obesity. These programs are also supposed to be publicly broadcast in partnership with drug companies, and companies often do so with plenty of fanfare. Yet Eli Lilly’s only mention of such a program for retatrutide is buried in a government-managed website for clinical trials.
Lawrence reportedly found no other example of Eli Lilly or Novo Nordisk (the other major GLP-1 maker currently, for that matter) offering their experimental therapies through compassionate use. And the 18 bioethics experts, obesity clinicians, and current and former government health officials she interviewed all agreed that this was an “unusual” application, to say the least.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone getting an experimental drug that appears to be tailor-made for their health problems. And retatrutide has shown the best trial results of any weight loss drug to date, so it’s almost certain to get a smooth ride toward FDA approval once it’s formally up for review later this year. But it is worth wondering why only someone who seemingly has friends in high places was able to get this particular drug ahead of everyone else who might benefit from it.
