RFK Jr. Says He's a "Big Fan" of Peptides, Citing Personal Use and "Really Good" Results for a Couple of Injuries

[designing677]

Good-Heart6425 said:

Martin Shkreli Says Silicon Valley's Hottest Health Obsession Is A 'Delusion'#-martin-shkreli-says-silicon-valleys-hottest-health-obsession-is-a-delusion

BENZINGA

Mar-24-2026 3:11 p.m. ET

Martin Shkreli views Silicon Valley's fixation on peptides as a "delusion," and he pushed back against peptide proponent and Superpower co-founder Max Marchione during a podcast debate.

The Debate#-the-debateAccording to Shkreli, who has twenty years of pharma experience and built his career around assessing pharmaceutical compounds, the entire category doesn't hold up to basic science, because peptides degrade inside the body within seconds or minutes.

His position is that without a known target, a binding mechanism, and genuine clinical data, there is no drug.

"If your drug has never been tested, there is a reason," he wrote in an X post. "The reason is not that you are a biopharmaceutical genius who has found something cool that everyone else missed."

Marchione, whose health optimization platform already sells peptides and is expanding its lineup, responded on X and during the TBPN debate.

What Are Peptides#-what-are-peptidesPeptides are small proteins, insulin being one example, that medicine has relied on for decades.

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs from Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO) are modified peptides.

The peptides fueling today's craze go much further.

Compounds including BPC-157 and thymosin alpha-1 are produced in Chinese labs, marketed online as "research chemicals," and injected by Silicon Valley founders and biohackers in pursuit of everything from gut healing to sex drive to better eye contact.

Joe Rogan refers to his regimen as the "wolverine stack," though the majority have never undergone a proper human trial.

Peptides are not arbitrary synthetic chemicals; they are endogenous molecules the body already makes, uses, and clears, giving them a risk profile fundamentally unlike that of a novel drug.

The actual reason most have not gone through FDA trials is not a lack of efficacy.

It is that many cannot be patented, leaving pharma with no commercial incentive to bankroll the approval pathway.

Marchione cited ketamine, once written off as merely an anesthetic, which went on to become one of the most important breakthroughs in treating depression.

RFK Jr. Steps In#-rfk-jr-steps-inHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to "end the war on peptides" and signaled that steps would be taken to improve access to them.

So far the FDA has done nothing, but should RFK Jr. prevail, the compounds Shkreli dismisses as delusion are set to become far more widely available.

A Polymarket contract on whether the FDA approves Lilly's retatrutide, a next-generation peptide for obesity with excellent trial results, this year, sits at 23%. The market has very little liquidity.

Lilly still has seven Phase 3 readouts pending and hasn't filed for approval. Twenty-three percent might be generous given the timeline, despite RFK's support

Since Martin Shkreli is clearly the go-to expert on every subject...

 

[CNCCurrency]

mtomm said:

PAPoots said:

+1. The guy comes across like a lifelong chain-smoker. It's tough to take him seriously when he looks half dead.

Honestly, what throws me off is that odd skin tone of his — it gives the impression he isn't in good health. Sure, he can knock out a workout while wearing jeans, so I'll give him that much. Still, there's no chance I'd take medical guidance from someone who rejects science.

Most likely running mt 2 grey

 

[tubby]

designing677 said:

Good-Heart6425 said:

Martin Shkreli Says Silicon Valley's Hottest Health Obsession Is A 'Delusion'#-martin-shkreli-says-silicon-valleys-hottest-health-obsession-is-a-delusion

BENZINGA

Mar-24-2026 3:11 p.m. ET

Martin Shkreli views Silicon Valley's fixation on peptides as a "delusion," and he pushed back against peptide proponent and Superpower co-founder Max Marchione during a podcast debate.

The Debate#-the-debateAccording to Shkreli, who has twenty years of pharma experience and built his career around assessing pharmaceutical compounds, the entire category doesn't hold up to basic science, because peptides degrade inside the body within seconds or minutes.

His position is that without a known target, a binding mechanism, and genuine clinical data, there is no drug.

"If your drug has never been tested, there is a reason," he wrote in an X post. "The reason is not that you are a biopharmaceutical genius who has found something cool that everyone else missed."

Marchione, whose health optimization platform already sells peptides and is expanding its lineup, responded on X and during the TBPN debate.

What Are Peptides#-what-are-peptidesPeptides are small proteins, insulin being one example, that medicine has relied on for decades.

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs from Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO) are modified peptides.

The peptides fueling today's craze go much further.

Compounds including BPC-157 and thymosin alpha-1 are produced in Chinese labs, marketed online as "research chemicals," and injected by Silicon Valley founders and biohackers in pursuit of everything from gut healing to sex drive to better eye contact.

Joe Rogan refers to his regimen as the "wolverine stack," though the majority have never undergone a proper human trial.

Peptides are not arbitrary synthetic chemicals; they are endogenous molecules the body already makes, uses, and clears, giving them a risk profile fundamentally unlike that of a novel drug.

The actual reason most have not gone through FDA trials is not a lack of efficacy.

It is that many cannot be patented, leaving pharma with no commercial incentive to bankroll the approval pathway.

Marchione cited ketamine, once written off as merely an anesthetic, which went on to become one of the most important breakthroughs in treating depression.

RFK Jr. Steps In#-rfk-jr-steps-inHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to "end the war on peptides" and signaled that steps would be taken to improve access to them.

So far the FDA has done nothing, but should RFK Jr. prevail, the compounds Shkreli dismisses as delusion are set to become far more widely available.

A Polymarket contract on whether the FDA approves Lilly's retatrutide, a next-generation peptide for obesity with excellent trial results, this year, sits at 23%. The market has very little liquidity.

Lilly still has seven Phase 3 readouts pending and hasn't filed for approval. Twenty-three percent might be generous given the timeline, despite RFK's support

Since Martin Shkreli is clearly the go-to expert on every subject...

From what I've observed of him, he does seem fairly well informed. On peptides we clearly don't see eye to eye, but it's notable that he'd take that kind of position publicly.

 

[designing677]

tubby said:

designing677 said:

Good-Heart6425 said:

Martin Shkreli Says Silicon Valley's Hottest Health Obsession Is A 'Delusion'#-martin-shkreli-says-silicon-valleys-hottest-health-obsession-is-a-delusion

BENZINGA

Mar-24-2026 3:11 p.m. ET

Martin Shkreli views Silicon Valley's fixation on peptides as a "delusion," and he pushed back against peptide proponent and Superpower co-founder Max Marchione during a podcast debate.

The Debate#-the-debateAccording to Shkreli, who has twenty years of pharma experience and built his career around assessing pharmaceutical compounds, the entire category doesn't hold up to basic science, because peptides degrade inside the body within seconds or minutes.

His position is that without a known target, a binding mechanism, and genuine clinical data, there is no drug.

"If your drug has never been tested, there is a reason," he wrote in an X post. "The reason is not that you are a biopharmaceutical genius who has found something cool that everyone else missed."

Marchione, whose health optimization platform already sells peptides and is expanding its lineup, responded on X and during the TBPN debate.

What Are Peptides#-what-are-peptidesPeptides are small proteins, insulin being one example, that medicine has relied on for decades.

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs from Eli Lilly and Co. (LLY) and Novo Nordisk (NVO) are modified peptides.

The peptides fueling today's craze go much further.

Compounds including BPC-157 and thymosin alpha-1 are produced in Chinese labs, marketed online as "research chemicals," and injected by Silicon Valley founders and biohackers in pursuit of everything from gut healing to sex drive to better eye contact.

Joe Rogan refers to his regimen as the "wolverine stack," though the majority have never undergone a proper human trial.

Peptides are not arbitrary synthetic chemicals; they are endogenous molecules the body already makes, uses, and clears, giving them a risk profile fundamentally unlike that of a novel drug.

The actual reason most have not gone through FDA trials is not a lack of efficacy.

It is that many cannot be patented, leaving pharma with no commercial incentive to bankroll the approval pathway.

Marchione cited ketamine, once written off as merely an anesthetic, which went on to become one of the most important breakthroughs in treating depression.

RFK Jr. Steps In#-rfk-jr-steps-inHHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to "end the war on peptides" and signaled that steps would be taken to improve access to them.

So far the FDA has done nothing, but should RFK Jr. prevail, the compounds Shkreli dismisses as delusion are set to become far more widely available.

A Polymarket contract on whether the FDA approves Lilly's retatrutide, a next-generation peptide for obesity with excellent trial results, this year, sits at 23%. The market has very little liquidity.

Lilly still has seven Phase 3 readouts pending and hasn't filed for approval. Twenty-three percent might be generous given the timeline, despite RFK's support

Since Martin Shkreli is clearly the go-to expert on every subject...

From what I've observed of him, he does seem fairly well informed. On peptides we clearly don't see eye to eye, but it's notable that he'd take that kind of position publicly.

My impression must come from different material than yours.

 

[lessthanhalf]

Sadly, the comment I wrote saying what I honestly think about RFK was taken down. Beyond the US, a handful of people back certain of his positions, yet the overwhelming majority watch with alarm as someone who denies vaccines and is essentially an anti-science opportunist ends up running the health apparatus there. It is, frankly, already in a poor state: spending per person on health is the highest on earth by a wide gap, while several health measures rank among the worst for a developed western country. And people who deny vaccines produce needless deaths, particularly among children. That is not a matter of opinion, it is simply a fact, and scientific research backs it up.

Setting aside the GLP's and, to some extent, a few others, the science generally does not back most peptides. The majority have never been tested in humans, a few have had a very small amount of testing, and nobody considers it worth spending the huge sums needed for large scale studies to establish whether they work. Patents play a part in that, but the main reason is that they simply are not good enough to warrant more research, or they act broadly across multiple receptor systems, which makes it hard to fully grasp what they might do. Researchers strongly favor drugs with one mode of action, since the odds of off target effects are far lower, so they avoid sinking millions into development only to discover an unexpected off target effect that kills the drug's viability. Often, with modern tools, it is simpler to design brand new molecules from scratch, or to screen enormous libraries of molecules for the effect they are after. The chance that the peptides popular right now will ever secure FDA approval is effectively near zero, with 1 or 2 exceptions that are still under active development.

 

[CNCCurrency]

lessthanhalf said:

Sadly, the comment I wrote saying what I honestly think about RFK was taken down. Beyond the US, a handful of people back certain of his positions, yet the overwhelming majority watch with alarm as someone who denies vaccines and is essentially an anti-science opportunist ends up running the health apparatus there. It is, frankly, already in a poor state: spending per person on health is the highest on earth by a wide gap, while several health measures rank among the worst for a developed western country. And people who deny vaccines produce needless deaths, particularly among children. That is not a matter of opinion, it is simply a fact, and scientific research backs it up.

Setting aside the GLP's and, to some extent, a few others, the science generally does not back most peptides. The majority have never been tested in humans, a few have had a very small amount of testing, and nobody considers it worth spending the huge sums needed for large scale studies to establish whether they work. Patents play a part in that, but the main reason is that they simply are not good enough to warrant more research, or they act broadly across multiple receptor systems, which makes it hard to fully grasp what they might do. Researchers strongly favor drugs with one mode of action, since the odds of off target effects are far lower, so they avoid sinking millions into development only to discover an unexpected off target effect that kills the drug's viability. Often, with modern tools, it is simpler to design brand new molecules from scratch, or to screen enormous libraries of molecules for the effect they are after. The chance that the peptides popular right now will ever secure FDA approval is effectively near zero, with 1 or 2 exceptions that are still under active development.

Sums it up nicely.

 

[tubby]

lessthanhalf said:

Sadly, the comment I wrote saying what I honestly think about RFK was taken down. Beyond the US, a handful of people back certain of his positions, yet the overwhelming majority watch with alarm as someone who denies vaccines and is essentially an anti-science opportunist ends up running the health apparatus there. It is, frankly, already in a poor state: spending per person on health is the highest on earth by a wide gap, while several health measures rank among the worst for a developed western country. And people who deny vaccines produce needless deaths, particularly among children. That is not a matter of opinion, it is simply a fact, and scientific research backs it up.

Setting aside the GLP's and, to some extent, a few others, the science generally does not back most peptides. The majority have never been tested in humans, a few have had a very small amount of testing, and nobody considers it worth spending the huge sums needed for large scale studies to establish whether they work. Patents play a part in that, but the main reason is that they simply are not good enough to warrant more research, or they act broadly across multiple receptor systems, which makes it hard to fully grasp what they might do. Researchers strongly favor drugs with one mode of action, since the odds of off target effects are far lower, so they avoid sinking millions into development only to discover an unexpected off target effect that kills the drug's viability. Often, with modern tools, it is simpler to design brand new molecules from scratch, or to screen enormous libraries of molecules for the effect they are after. The chance that the peptides popular right now will ever secure FDA approval is effectively near zero, with 1 or 2 exceptions that are still under active development.

Honestly, when someone feels the need to announce it like that, does it actually hold up? Sounds a lot more like a personal opinion to me.

 

[Habibibi]

What if vaccines got reclassified as peptides? Then maybe RFK would give them a friendly look . After all, who would turn down an annual anti-flu peptide?