Sure, current leading pharma companies will keep making money if they don’t invent an obesity cure. But most people aren’t in the pharma business, and even most scientists with the relevant expertise aren’t pharma magnates. If there were some one-and-done obesity chemical that no drug company bothered to market yet, it would actually be a great act of charity to the industry for everyone to unanimously ignore that opportunity. Realistically, there are a bunch of also-ran pharma companies who would jump at the chance to be the exclusive seller of this miracle drug for 17 years until the patent ran out.