Why Shameless Care Has Never Offered Semaglutide

Shameless Care launched in May of 2022. Not long after, semaglutide became one of the fastest-growing medications in telehealth.

We could have been early.

All of our compounding pharmacy partners make semaglutide. We already had a physician network, a telehealth platform, and an audience. There is no question that offering it would have significantly increased revenue and likely made me, the founder, a lot more money.

We chose not to offer it anyway.

That decision was intentional, and it says a lot about who we are.

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Reason One: Why Shameless Care Exists in the First Place

Shameless Care exists because I was personally failed by a telehealth platform.

I was told I was “STI free” after testing. Later, I learned that the company simply did not include throat swab testing. I was not STI free. The test panel was incomplete.

That experience shaped this company.

Shameless Care was built to help people get better sexual healthcare, not to become a massive telehealth conglomerate that sells anything and everything simply because it is profitable.

We are not trying to be a Fortune 500 company. We are trying to do a specific thing well.

Specifically, we focus on sexual health, testing accuracy, and medications that directly support safe, informed intimacy.

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Reason Two: The Way Semaglutide Is Marketed Is Not Who We Are

To sell semaglutide at scale, you almost inevitably have to rely on body-shaming marketing, even if it is subtle.

Spend five minutes looking at semaglutide ads and you will see it:

• Women in bikinis
• Men in board shorts
• “Before and after” narratives
• Thinness framed as success, worth, or discipline

This medication was developed to help people with obesity-related metabolic disease and blood sugar dysregulation become healthier.

For many people, when prescribed appropriately for legitimate medical reasons, semaglutide can be life-changing and genuinely beneficial.

It is now widely marketed to people who are not obese, who are not diabetic, and who are primarily struggling with body image.

Competing in that space without leaning into those tactics would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

For the same reason, we have also chosen not to offer hair loss medications. Some companies can do that responsibly. Many cannot. It is not the lane we want to be in.

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Reason Three: The Legal Gray Area Around Compounding

Semaglutide is a patented medication.

During the FDA-declared shortage of branded semaglutide products, compounding pharmacies were permitted to produce compounded versions of semaglutide or semaglutide-related compounds when prescribers could not obtain sufficient supply from the patent holder.

That FDA-declared shortage has ended.

Under normal circumstances, compounding pharmacies are not permitted to compound patented drugs when commercially available versions are no longer in shortage. Some pharmacies continue to produce compounded semaglutide or semaglutide-related formulations, often relying on interpretations of compounding exemptions or alternative molecular forms.

Whether those practices are fully compliant remains an area of regulatory uncertainty.

Some companies are comfortable operating in that uncertainty. We are not.

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Why Independence Matters

It is also worth being honest about incentives.

If Shameless Care were venture-backed, the pressure to offer semaglutide would be immediate and intense. From a purely financial standpoint, it would be the obvious move.

But that same pressure often extends elsewhere. Growth-at-all-costs models reward speed, volume, and simplification. In healthcare, that frequently means narrower testing panels, broader marketing claims, and fewer hard conversations about what patients actually need.

Because Shameless Care is independent, we are able to make different choices.

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The Real Reason: You Have to Stand for Something

At the end of the day, this is a values decision.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: if you do not stand for something, you will fall for anything.

You cannot position yourself as the trusted, evidence-based sexual health authority while also selling medications for anything and everything simply because there is demand.