A Maryland man claims that a popular weight-loss drug caused his total vision loss, leaving him legally blind.
Todd Engel, 63, was first prescribed Ozempic in 2023 to help manage his diabetes. The GLP-1 medication, which is approved to treat type 2 diabetes, is also commonly prescribed off-label for weight loss.
Approximately four months after starting the medication, Engel was diagnosed with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).
The condition, in which reduced blood flow damages the optic nerve, can cause sudden and permanent vision loss.
“I first noticed it on New Year’s Eve, 2024. I had just gotten out of the shower, was getting ready to go to work. And I said to Shelley, ‘I can’t see in my right eye. It’s totally black. It’s totally dark in my right eye,’” Engel told Fox News Digital during an on-camera interview.
“I was horrified. I was very, very upset that I couldn’t see.”
Engel was referred for further testing, including at Johns Hopkins’ Wilmer Eye Institute. He was told he had suffered an “eye stroke,” another term used for NAION.
“The blood work came back in the normal range for me. My blood pressure was fine. They said, ‘You can go back to work,’” he said.
Engel continued taking Ozempic because, according to the family’s account, neither he nor his doctors knew of a possible association between semaglutide and NAION.
About 10 months later, vision loss suddenly occurred in his left eye.
“At that point in time, losing sight in both eyes, there was a tremendous amount of concern,” he said.
Doctors told Engel there was no medication or surgical procedure that could restore his vision.
Shelley Engel said that medical testing did not identify another common factor beyond Ozempic. Her husband immediately stopped taking the drug after losing vision in his second eye.
“I didn’t go blind — I had my vision taken from me, which was catastrophic to me and to my family,” he said.
Engel has filed a lawsuit against Novo Nordisk, the Denmark-based manufacturer of Ozempic, alleging that the company failed to adequately warn patients and doctors about the potential risk of vision loss.
He is among hundreds of patients currently pursuing legal action against makers of GLP-1 medications, including Ozempic and Wegovy, over claims that the drugs caused NAION.
The lawsuits allege that manufacturers failed to provide sufficient warnings about the potential risks, although a causal relationship between the medications and the condition has not been definitively established.
Life after vision loss
At the time of his vision loss, Engel was working for Howard County Highways as a heavy equipment operator and truck driver.
He had worked in the field for about 40 years and held a commercial driver’s license for nearly as long.
“I was extremely mechanically inclined with my hands and in my mind. I can’t do that anymore, which is extremely upsetting to me,” he said.
“People want to be able to retire on their own accord when they want to, not when a medical catastrophic injury such as this … takes away your livelihood.”
Beyond losing his career, Engel said even ordinary activities he once took for granted have become difficult.
An avid reader before his vision loss, Engel said he can no longer read newspapers, magazines or books. Inside his home, he has learned to count steps to help navigate familiar spaces.
“I know that coming in from our parking lot, there are 10 steps … nine going down into our basement, 13 going up into our bedroom.”
Engel said he now uses a white cane to navigate outside his home and relies on his family for help with everyday activities. His four grandchildren often guide him during family gatherings.
“They will take me by my hand and talk to me: ‘Pops, three steps straight. Then we’re gonna turn right,’” he said.
“For me personally, it’s embarrassing. I’m 64 years old. I shouldn’t need … my grandchildren or my wife to help me get from point A to point B.”
His wife, Shelley Engel, said her husband’s vision loss has affected the entire family.
“It has completely changed every aspect of our lives,” she said. “There is not one piece of our lives that hasn’t changed or been touched by this throughout our whole family.”
For Engel, some of the most painful losses involve the things he can no longer do with the people closest to him.
“I will never be able to see my wife’s beautiful face again, be able to see children and grandchildren, be able to play ball with them,” he said. “And that is very, very upsetting to me.”
“I wake up in the dark, I go to sleep in the darkness.”
A warning to others
Engel said that if he had been warned about a possible link between Ozempic and vision loss, he would not have taken the drug.
“Had I known, had my doctor had any inkling that this could have happened … I’m sure he would have asked me and I would have said absolutely not,” he said. “I will deal with the diabetes … I refuse to jeopardize my eyes.”
The Engels said they are speaking publicly in hopes of preventing others from experiencing the same outcome.
“Do the research for yourselves to make sure that my catastrophic injuries do not happen to you or anybody else,” Engel said. “If we can help one person, then that’s a pleasure to Shelley and I.”
‘It’s about information’
The family’s attorney, Jonathan Orent, said the legal team is seeking a warning on the US Ozempic label similar to information provided to patients and doctors in Europe.
Orent is co-lead counsel in nationwide litigation involving GLP-1 drugs, including lawsuits alleging vision loss linked to Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound.
“It’s amazing what just a simple warning can do,” he told Fox News Digital. “That’s really what this case is about. It’s about information.”
Company response
Novo Nordisk, the Denmark-based company that makes Ozempic, has disputed that the medication causes NAION, stating that the available evidence does not establish a causal relationship between semaglutide and the eye condition.
“A causal relationship between GLP-1RAs, including semaglutide, and NAION cannot be confirmed based on the totality of data,” Liz Skrbkova, head of US Media and Stakeholder Relations for Novo Nordisk, told Fox News Digital.
The company pointed to an analysis of its randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials that found very few confirmed cases of NAION and no increased incidence among patients taking semaglutide.
Novo said it continues to monitor NAION as part of its routine drug-safety surveillance.
“Novo believes the personal injury lawsuits filed in the US are without merit, and we are defending them in court,” Skrbkova said.

AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — When Rae Heath stops at a gas station to refuel during long bike rides, she said she always notices the colorful products by the register.
“I walk up to the counter, and I just look at what they have, and I don’t say anything to the guy at the counter,” Heath said.
But Heath actually has a lot to say.
The colorful packages lined up right next to the cash register are the reason her son isn’t coming home.
Heath, a 19-year-old music major at Oklahoma State University with dreams of playing in an orchestra pit, died in April of what federal health officials are calling “gas station heroin.”
“I spoke to him on my birthday,” his mom said. “He just sounded really out of it.”
According to his autopsy, Jonas died of toxicity caused by 7-Hydromitragynine (7-OH), kratom and a derivative of 7-OH.
Kratom is a plant native to Southeast Asia and in small doses can help someone focus, but in large doses can act as a sedative, said Wendell Campbell, a drug intelligence officer at the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
Trace amounts of 7-OH occur naturally in dried kratom, but now chemical labs are synthetically mass-producing it into concentrated tablets, drinks, and vapes.
The Food and Drug Administration warns that 7-OH is up to 13 times more potent than morphine.
“It’s something that an individual can develop a dependency on pretty quickly,” Campbell said. “When you develop that opioid use disorder or dependency to 7-OH, you just got to have it every day.”
While Narcan, a life-saving medicine known to rapidly reverse opioid overdoses, has been effective for drugs like fentanyl, Campbell said it now takes four to six doses of Narcan to reverse a single 7-OH overdose.
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13 Investigates found kratom and 7-OH-related deaths have increased since the state first started tracking it.
In 2017, the Texas Department of State Health Services recorded 14 fatalities due to kratom and 7-OH.
By 2023, when concentrated 7-OH products flooded the market, state data shows 114 fatalities.
So far this year, from January through the end of August, Texas has already counted 111 kratom- and 7-OH-related deaths.
A graphic released by the FDA explicitly charts 7-OH as the next rising wave in the opioid epidemic after prescription pills, heroin, and more recently, fentanyl.
With 7-OH, the window between first use and death or potential overdose can be quick.
From what Heath has pieced together, she believes her son started taking kratom and progressed to 7-OH less than two months before he died.
“This is not in the same realm of kids that experiment with pot and THC. This is something completely different and much more deadly,” she said.
Heath turned her grief into advocacy and launched the nonprofit 7-OH Truth Project last month to educate others.
She is also talking with Texas lawmakers about a bill to criminalize the drug.
The bill, which she expects to be filed during the upcoming legislative session, would classify kratom extracts and synthetic 7-OH as Schedule I controlled substances, slap manufacturers and unauthorized sellers with felony charges, invoke civil penalties and require mandatory overdose reporting.
“If this saves another 19-year-old boy, another 17-year-old girl from the same fate, then I just think it’s such a meaningful, meaningful thing,” Heath said.
In Texas, products with more than a 2% concentration of 7-OH already violate state law, but weak enforcement has kept the product accessible.
In April, the Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit against two California-based online kratom retailers for selling products that contain between 86 and 96% of the alkaloid content in 7-OH that is supposed to be capped at two percent.
Other states have proved targeted enforcement works.
California authorities took action last year after Los Angeles County recorded 10 local 7-OH overdose deaths from 2025 to early 2026.
“We were alerted by our medical examiner that we were seeing overdose cases involving 7-OH that seemed to be where 7-OH was the cause of the overdose event, and so we quickly put out health alerts, we made sure the community was aware and then we exercised part of the California law that allowed us to go into facilities and run inspections where we looked for 7-OH in kratom products and directed retailers removed them from shelves,” said Dr. Brian Hurley, interim director and medical director of the Bureau of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Hurley said they conducted 5,000 inspections countywide and identified and removed kratom products from nearly 500 locations.
Since that enforcement action started, Hurley said Los Angeles County hasn’t recorded any more 7-OH-related deaths.
“We did see a direct line, or a timing, between when we took these enforcement actions and when we see a drop in 7-OH overdoses, so that would be a lesson I would want other jurisdictions to consider,” Hurley said.
Tragedies tied to 7-OH continue making national headlines.
Famed music producer Tay Keith was found dead in his Nashville apartment in June, according to ABC News. The network reports that, based on his autopsy, he died from a mix of drugs, including 7-OH.
Last month, two University of Mississippi students were found dead on the same day. Federal prosecutors subsequently arrested a local smoke shop owner and his son for allegedly supplying the students with the drug.
The arrests show a level of accountability that Heath wants enacted in Texas law.
A bill was proposed in the Texas Senate during the last legislative session in 2025 with similar goals related to kratom and 7-OH, but it didn’t pass.
When it comes to tackling addictive drugs in the community, Mike McDaniel, executive director of the Houston High Intensity Drug Tracking Area, said law enforcement officials can’t do it alone.
He said whether it’s on the federal level or the state level, he’s optimistic there will be some positive changes soon when it comes to addressing this wave of 7-OH deaths.
“That’s why we’re partnering with treatment addiction professionals, the (Medical Examiner’s) office,” McDaniel said. “What I could assure you about Houston, Texas, and our region is that we are very unified in our approach.”
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice has already filed an emergency action and notice of intent to make 7-OH a Schedule I drug, which would put it in the same classification as drugs like heroin and LSD.
Lawmakers can start filing bills in November for next year’s session, and Heath plans to be at the Capitol to fight for Jonas’s Law.
“I would do anything to have Jonas back, bar none, of course, but if this law gets passed and this stuff is banned, at least his life will have done something good for others,” Heath said.
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BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. — Bird flu caused the death of a bald eagle named Jackie who had become an internet sensation and a symbol of the species’ recovery in California, officials said.
A necropsy and additional testing found that the primary underlying cause of Jackie’s death in August was highly pathogenic avian influenza, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said Wednesday in a news release.
In the weeks before she died, Jackie was being treated at the Ojai Raptor Center for various ailments, including anemia. Chris Eksteen, the center’s director, said in the news release that the necropsy results “have helped connect many of the findings” they saw during her hospitalization.
“In an uncommon presentation of the virus, the infection caused a severe ulcer in her stomach that led to persistent internal bleeding, anemia, and the development of bacterial sepsis,” Steve Kubiski, the disease investigations director at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, where the necropsy was conducted, said in the news release.
For more than a decade, nature lovers watched via an online video feed as Jackie and her partner, Shadow, tended to their nest each year atop trees near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles. There’s no evidence Shadow is ill, according to the news release.
The nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley installed the nest camera in 2015 and documented the successes and failures of each breeding season.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza has been circulating in bird populations throughout the U.S. While waterfowl and shorebirds are natural hosts for bird flu viruses, eagles and other raptors can be exposed through contact with infected birds or by eating them, according to the news release.
Jackie’s remains were cremated to prevent transmission of the virus, it said.
American bald eagles teetered on the brink of extinction until the pesticide DDT was banned in the 1970s and other protections were established, leading the species to rebound and be removed from the federal endangered list.

Drugmakers are betting big that a new way of trashing bad proteins inside cells could reshape treatment for cancer and other diseases. The “protein degrader” drugs don’t just block troublesome proteins, the Wall Street Journal reports; they tag them for destruction using the cell’s own waste-disposal system, potentially reaching targets that have long eluded conventional medicines.
The FDA has cleared a few of these drugs, including Pfizer’s breast-cancer therapy Veppanu and Bristol Myers Squibb’s multiple myeloma drug Zenbexus, even as questions remain about how broadly they work and whether they might also knock out healthy proteins. Roughly 200 degraders are now in development worldwide, with more than $5 billion in deals reached since 2021, as companies test them in cancers, autoimmune diseases, and conditions including Parkinson’s.
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Plain old water could be responsible for making plastics harmful to people, according to a new study that portends significant consequences for human health.
The study, published Thursday in the prominent scientific journal Nature, found chemical reactions between water and six types of fossil fuel-based plastic created particles that damaged red blood cells and proteins in laboratory tests.
As plastic in the body breaks down into smaller and smaller bits — known as microplastics and nanoplastics — the potential danger increases, said Wei Min, a Columbia University chemist who co-authored the study.
“Is this phenomenon 5% responsible or 90% responsible for the health effects we are seeing, I can’t answer,” Min said during an interview. “But I would be surprised if it doesn’t play any role.”
Min’s study comes amid increasing concerns about plastic pollution in the Great Lakes, the source of drinking water for 40 million people in the United States and Canada, including nearly 7 million in the Chicago area.
The Chicago Tribune is documenting the hazards in “Great Waste in the Great Lakes,” a series about plastic pollution threatening the health and environment of Americans and Canadians who depend on the world’s largest source of fresh surface water.
Interactions between water and plastic could help explain why other studies have shown microplastics trigger inflammation, which contributes to a variety of diseases that together account for more than half of all deaths globally.
For now it’s impossible to prevent these reactions within the body. Human blood is about 50% water and cells are up to 80% water, Min noted.
“This challenges the reigning theory that plastic is inert (meaning it doesn’t prompt chemical or biological reactions),” said Sherri “Sam” Mason, a chemist at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, who studies plastic pollution in freshwater.
“I think it highlights the need for truly biodegradable plastic, rather than what industry increasingly puts out into the marketplace,” said Mason, who wasn’t involved in the new study but was one of the first researchers to find microplastics throughout the Great Lakes.
Scientists also are finding microplastics in nearly every part of the human body — the brain, the heart, ovaries and testicles. The mostly invisible bits course through blood and pass from mother to child through the placenta and breast milk.
Rapidly emerging research suggests the ingestion and inhalation of microplastics, nearly all of which are made from climate-changing fossil fuels, contribute to or outright trigger heart disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, impaired fertility and premature births, among other health problems.
Min and 11 colleagues, including researchers from the University of California Berkeley and Rutgers University, found water molecules behave differently when coming into contact with microplastics. Water essentially acts as a catalyst that spontaneously creates particles known as hydroxyl radicals, unstable molecules linked to aging and disease.
Two common types of plastic — polyethylene and polypropylene, used widely to make food containers, packaging, milk jugs and bottle caps — produced the most hydroxyl radicals detected by the researchers. The finding suggests certain plastics could be reformulated or phased out of consumer products, Min said.
“Our bodies have natural defense mechanisms,” said Phoebe Stapleton, a Rutgers professor of pharmacology and toxicology who co-authored the study. “But depending on other exposures we’ve had, our genetics and lifestyle choices, all of these (hydroxyl radicals) could build up to a point where we can’t handle them anymore.”
More than 8 billion tons of plastic already pollute the Earth. Manufacturers, including the world’s largest oil companies, are planning to triple production by 2060.
Craig Davis, senior director of plastics chemistry at the American Chemistry Council, the industry’s chief trade group, said in an email that the study “offers a novel look at microplastics outside the body.”
But, Davis said, “it does not establish whether the observed effects occur within the body’s complex biological systems or at actual human exposure levels to microplastics. Additionally, limited information about the particles tested in the version provided also makes the findings difficult to fully evaluate. Those gaps matter before drawing conclusions about human health.”
Min acknowledged the study’s limitations. Still, he said, the findings should help direct future research.