At the time it was not clear that GLP-1 solves obesity problem so effectively - many drugs suppress hunger (eg amphetamines), it's just that GLP-1 works long term and does not have significant side effects. Hard to predict without hindsight.

Insulin is injectable so GLP-1 was thought to be at best marginal improvement over already existing protocol - so likely profitable product but not excessively so. Company has limited resources so decisions on cuts have to be made and some of those decisions are naturally wrong - drugs are unpredictable.

On regret - they missed on 30B+ of profits so of cause they regret it.

So much of pharmaceutical development is educated guess work. For every promising compound even brought to human trials there were likely 10s-100s of others that were abandoned or neglected for lack of resources to pursue them all. Without the benefit of hindsight there are bound to be mistakes made.

> An injection to cure obesity is a small price to ask, as any person that has been obese will tell you. They could have determined this from a simple survey.

You're missing the primary point: GLP-1 was investigated as another me-too diabetes drug, for which there were many injectable drugs available.

It wasn't until much much later that it was discovered to be an obesity drug. It was a completely coincidental and accidental discovery.

It turns out that most science is like that. We make the most important discoveries unexpectedly and by chance. Which is why you should always distrust the politicians that mock and ridicule science for sounding ordinary or obvious. That's where the real magic happens.