00:00This is about the Million Dollar Peptides Gold Rush.
00:02And as I was reading it, I thought about a friend of mine
00:05who recently shared that he is the father of a teenage boy or two.
00:10He found some peptides in the refrigerator in the basement.
00:16Well, safe storage, at least.
00:18Safe storage, but not necessarily safe injection.
00:22Yes.
00:23Or safe part of the world or place that these came from.
00:28And that's really at the heart of the story.
00:32First of all, if people aren't familiar with peptides,
00:35Madison, start us out.
00:36What are they?
00:37Ooh, that's a good question.
00:39One of the things is that most people actually don't know what they are,
00:43don't know how to explain them, even if they think that they do.
00:46And a lot of people are injecting these things, don't really know what they are.
00:49But peptides are essentially, I mean, if you think about it,
00:52insulin's a peptide, GLP-1s are a peptide.
00:55There are a lot of legal drugs out there that are peptides, common drugs.
01:00But when we're talking about peptides, so putting it in this sort of context,
01:05we're talking about black market peptides,
01:07the ones that are not approved drugs,
01:10that don't really have the rigorous safety backing.
01:12These were the ones in the fridge of the teenage boy.
01:14Yes.
01:14Okay, this doesn't sound good.
01:16What exactly are black market peptides?
01:18Amanda?
01:20Well, they start off as like little glass vials of powder that are imported from overseas,
01:29usually from Chinese manufacturers, which it should be noted also produce a lot of the
01:33active pharmaceutical ingredients and perfectly legal, perfectly safe drugs.
01:37They're imported from overseas, little glass vials of powder.
01:41They're reconstituted with a special type of sterile liquid so that they can then be drawn
01:46up into a syringe and injected.
01:49And so once they're reconstituted, they have to be kept cold in order to be kept safe.
01:55So that's why they're in the fridge.
01:56Why do people want them?
01:58A whole host of reasons.
02:00For everything.
02:01For everything, basically.
02:02To sleep, to tan.
02:04One thing that may inform the question is Carol's not on Instagram.
02:09Maybe she doesn't see the same things I do.
02:11Well, tell us about like what is going on.
02:14Well, people are looking for a magic pill.
02:18Like as always, as the beginning of humanity, people have been looking for substances that
02:23can solve various problems.
02:27And people are hopeful because GLP-1 drugs are so effective at helping people lose weight.
02:33And work.
02:34They work.
02:34They work.
02:35They're safe.
02:36They're effective.
02:36They've been used in large, you know, patient populations.
02:40So once those got popular, people started looking for other peptides to do other things
02:44in their bodies.
02:45Well, Madison, you cover the regulated, mostly the regulated pharmaceutical industry as a
02:50healthcare reporter.
02:52Do the black market peptides work?
02:55Does the stuff that is sold as part of, I don't know, a filler treatment at a med spa in
03:01Brooklyn
03:02or the stuff that a celebrity talks about as a secret to looking?
03:05You seem to know a lot about this.
03:07It's all in the story.
03:07I know, I know.
03:08I'm just kidding.
03:08I'm just kidding.
03:10Do they work?
03:12Like, is there the evidence to back it up?
03:14That is the key question.
03:16Because the thing is, like, if you ask someone, and we ask many people in the course of reporting
03:20the story, several of whom are in the story, they do work.
03:24They're life-changing.
03:25But the evidence and the safety data and the effectiveness data is not there to back it up.
03:31So it's hard to know and it's hard to tease out.
03:34I mean, one of the people that we talk to in the story is on terzepatide, which is the
03:39active ingredient in Lily's drugs.
03:40They're also on multiple other things.
03:43And so it's hard to know whether the effects that they're experiencing, the anti-inflammatory
03:48effects, the weight loss, all of the things are because of Lily's drug, which we know
03:53does work, or the other things that they're on.
03:56And, you know, sometimes when people start taking these peptides, they might also start
04:00working out more or start eating healthier or doing other things.
04:03And it's just a bit hard to know what's actually happening.
04:08So the FDA is all over this, right?
04:10Well, all over it is.
04:11It's a little bit generous.
04:12There was a little sarcasm there.
04:15Yeah.
04:16I mean, they're all over it in certain ways.
04:18Well, tell us, where are they on this?
04:20Because it's obviously people are interested, people are consuming them, right?
04:23And so where are they?
04:25Yeah.
04:25Well, I think perhaps we haven't said this yet, but these drugs are like illegal to sell,
04:30illegal to prescribe.
04:31They are black market substances.
04:33They are not approved for legal sale in the United States.
04:36And the ones that are approved for legal sale, if you're getting them in vials of powder,
04:41you're getting an illegal version of them that's being sold outside of patent.
04:44It won't be the first time that somebody consumes an illegal substance, right?
04:48Yeah.
04:48Illegal drugs are something.
04:50You have a long and storied history in this country.
04:52Okay.
04:52But what's worrisome, though, right?
04:54And where is the government on this?
04:56Right.
04:56So RFK Jr. has said he's a peptide fan, first and foremost, and has said that because there
05:02is this overwhelming...
05:03Yeah, I know.
05:04Hold on, but that's such a...
05:05Hold on, hold on.
05:05I just want to stop you there because that's contradictory in some way because a lot of
05:09his supporters, Madison, you've been on our program talking about this.
05:12A lot of the Make America Healthy Again people are sort of anti-GLP1, which you helpfully
05:16shared with us at the beginning, is a peptide.
05:18So is there some sort of contradiction there?
05:21They're being sort of caught in a bit of a corner that they've backed themselves into,
05:26I would say.
05:27Okay.
05:27Because there is...
05:30The way I would think about it is that it's not an incoherent position toward science or
05:37scientific proof or towards these drugs, but it's a coherent position in regards to an
05:41attitude toward authority.
05:42So getting these things outside of normal medical guidelines, outside of normal chains of
05:48expertise, outside of a doctor's office in most cases, is really an effective pitch for
05:56the Maha crowd for a lot of different things because it enables a person to feel like they
06:00are taking control of their health and not listening to what the government or big pharma
06:05says.
06:06So the existence of these peptide supply chains outside of regulatory control is very enticing
06:13to the whole Maha mindset, I would say.
06:16So RFK Jr. has said that he is a fan of peptides and he has instructed the FDA's regulatory committee
06:24on compounded pharmaceuticals to look into allowing some of these drugs to be made by compounding
06:30pharmacies, which wouldn't approve them for like regular pharmacy sale in like your local
06:34CVS, but it would make them available through like sterile facilities in the U.S.
06:40Well, isn't that going to tick off Peter Magic?
06:44Or it will do more business.
06:47Or who is...
06:47Yeah, tell us about him, because that's kind of the character that kicks off your story.
06:51Do you want to go into it?
06:52Sure.
06:53So...
06:53He drives a fast car.
06:55Yes, that's all you need to know.
06:56Peter Magic is a chemist with a lab outside of Prague.
06:59Is Magic his real name?
07:01Yes.
07:01As far as we can tell.
07:02Oh, okay.
07:02As far as we can tell.
07:03Keep going.
07:04He owns a testing lab outside of Prague that has sort of become like a central node in the
07:11trade of black market peptides across the world because he started his business to test
07:17black market anabolic steroids, and peptides first gained like sort of a foothold through
07:23some of the same users, like fitness, hobbyists, biohackers, people who are interested in perfecting
07:29their own form.
07:29So he realized there was an opportunity to purity and sterility test these substances because
07:35like users of anabolic steroids, people want them and they want them outside of legal means,
07:40but they still don't want to like die because they injected something.
07:44Yeah.
07:44So...
07:45Good note to self, right?
07:45So Madison, does that mean they're safe?
07:48Still not necessarily.
07:49I mean, the thing that, you know, he can, he can test these substances.
07:52He can say that they are what they purport to be, but a lot of these people, like the
07:58practices of injecting yourself with the medication, like some people aren't changing the syringe
08:03or they're not, you know, cleaning properly.
08:06And like there can still be things in these drugs that are not necessarily safe.
08:11And like the practice of, of how people are actually taking and consuming these medicines,
08:18like there's just no oversight.
08:20So any number of things can happen.
08:22And that's sort of the problem.
08:24I mean, there can be medication interactions.
08:25You can be the, one of the things is with some of these peptides, you need to take blood
08:29tests.
08:30You need to cycle on and off of them.
08:31So you're not essentially like poisoning yourself and not everyone knows that.
08:36So it's like all of these things that in, you know, with normal drugs and in a normal
08:40setting would have some type of doctor involved or some type of oversight or just not happening.
08:45What does the medical community say?
08:47What do doctors say?
08:48Well, we, there are some doctors who are also fans of them and like, we talked to some of
08:52them in this story and, and those doctors are more comfortable, I would say with the risks
08:57or aware of the risks.
08:59Um, but they think that some of the benefits might outweigh the risks.
09:03And so it's, it's definitely challenging.
09:06Amanda, do we get to a point where in a couple of years, this is just going to look so
09:10quaint
09:10because these have made their way through, uh, a formal approval process and we'll be
09:16able to buy legitimate peptides at CVS?
09:20Probably not.
09:21Um, the FDA's, uh, process for approving, um, drugs like this for regular commercial sale
09:29is pretty specific in the kinds of proof that it requires.
09:33And in order to, this is the same reason why it's been, uh, until, uh, you know, last week
09:38it was years and years since we had gotten a new sunscreen filter approved, even though
09:42there's lots of effective ones being used in Europe and Asia for decades.
09:46Um, the FDA requires like somebody to invest in a lot of very expensive, lengthy clinical
09:51trials in order to create the sort of safety and efficacy data that it requires in order
09:55for these drugs to be sold commercially.
09:57So because these drugs exist outside of like the normal patent process that, that would normally
10:03allow a single company to, um, profit off of them exclusively for a period of time after
10:09their approval.
10:10Um, nobody, no single company is really incentivized to go through the effort of, uh, getting these
10:16drugs, um, you know, tested and approved in the way that they normally would be because
10:20once they're approved, then all of their competitors can make them and sell them as well.
10:25So, um, the FDA, at least under RFK seems intent on, you know, sort of making an end run
10:31around that, that type of legalization.
10:35Um, or at least that's the issue that they're going to take up in a few weeks.
10:39We only have about 50 seconds left here.
10:41I'm just like in reporting this out, cause there are people, as you say, it's all over
10:45social and people are looking at this and thinking, should I take this?
10:48What's a quick like thought to them, Madison, or what's your, what, what did you learn in
10:53kind of doing this?
10:54I mean, I think that it will be really important for people to tune into this FDA meeting that's
10:59happening in July, where they will literally be reviewing the evidence and the data around
11:05these things.
11:05There are independent experts on this committee that will be talking about that.
11:09Yeah.
11:09And most of the people that we talked to say there really isn't any evidence or human
11:14data on this.
11:14So I think like, hopefully that will make people aware of the situation more.
11:1915 seconds for you, Amanda.
11:20Well, I think many of their proponents agree that there's not any data, but they think that
11:25they should be able to give it a shot if they want to.
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