by Christian Duque
It looks like the FDA ban on peptides is on the way and this has sent clinics scrambling. Peptides are simply chains of amino acids. They’re not proprietary and they’re quite simple in their makeup. Some are hormonal, while others are not. They’re not steroids or prohormones. They don’t have definite negative side effects yet the regulatory organization seems to be coming down hard on them for what harm they may cause as opposed to what harm they actually do cause.
A great many folks who rely on these treatments don’t even lift hard or compete. They’re being used by everyday folks who are simply looking for a better quality of life. A great many go to clinics and are seen by medical doctors that run blood panels and prescribe peptide therapies for a whole host of issues from muscle wasting issues, to pain management, to simply getting in good shape after years of living with obesity and heart disease.
This ban is one of the first in recent memory that gets in the way of licensed healthcare professionals from directing the course of treatment of their patients. Whereas the prohormone bans made sense – on some level – as many of those compounds were very liver toxic and represented more harm than good, peptides have been shown a tried and true trend of helping people.
To date, I don’t know of a single person that’s had a horror story using BPC 157, MK677, or many others. They get exactly what they expect, they don’t abuse the treatment, and they’re living great lives as a result of a very inexpensive, seemingly harmless therapy option. So if everything is so copacetic then where’s the need for the ban? Who’s behind it, why now, and what’s likely to come of it?
We can sit here and run conspiracy theories all day and night. There’s no telling who in the government has been obsessed with all supplements that work since the early 1990’s. It seems wasteful for elected officials on Capitol Hill and bureaucrats at the alphabet agencies to sit around pontificating which health and well-being products they’re going after next. But that’s the nature of the beast. The intention is one that’s allegedly based on the well-being of the citizenry, yet, when’s the last time a prescription drug came under the kind of fire peptides are enduring and/or the kind of fire prohormones received during the 2010’s? Those products either get quietly taken off the market or their lobbyists ensure that agencies and elected officials find something else to go after. And what’s a lobbyist?
A lobbyist is a paid person or company that lobbies elected officials. But what’s lobbying exactly? Lobbying, is basically whoring. I hate to be so crass, but you’re basically doing a lot of bootlicking, wining and dining, and going as far as is legally possible. Notice I use the term legal and don’t focus too much on ethics. This is because many people have issues with the whole concept of lobbying to begin with. It can get pretty shady – quickly.
Big Pharma has armies of lobbyists. They also have a tendency to be very generous with elected officials’ campaigns and PAC’s. There’s so much that’s legal, yet questionably ethical, that you’re left wondering if elected officials who we vote in, actually work with our best interests at heart. The sad reality is that most only want our votes. Our votes are a mere formality. The real movers and shakers are the donors, the lobbyists, and the big ticket sectors like Big Pharma.
Why do I keep throwing around the term Big Pharma? Big Pharma this, Big Pharma that. What’s Big Pharma?
Big Pharma is a slang term for all the big drug companies who tend to have proprietary claims over all sorts of medications. Through their lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for elected officials, they can do essentially whatever they want – including driving up the prices of medications. Take insulin, for example.
Insulin is so cheap to make that it could be next to free yet there’s shortages all over the place and prices are through the roof. That’s because Big Pharma knows people can’t live without it.
Look at growth hormones. Synthetic growth hormone from Big Pharma would put most blue collar people in the poor house. And we’ve heard of this in the bodybuilding world as well. In the muscle game, growth was always a status supplement reserved only for the richest and most successful bodybuilders. Big Pharma has made a killing on synthetic growth hormone, but those numbers started to take a major dip when folks discovered MK677. This dirt cheap peptide works! It works so well that it’s been called the poor man’s growth hormone. The problem with MK, like all other peptides, is that it’s just amino acid chains. There’s absolutely nothing proprietary about it. Big Pharma isn’t just losing money, but they can’t make money with it, either.
Greed is more than likely the catalyst for the FDA ban. It probably has very little to do with health or health risks. If it did, then I’d have to ask the John Romano mic drop question – “where are the bodies?”
So once the ban goes into effect people are going to swear off peptides, right? Those who can afford the Big Pharma overpriced synthetic lab concoctions will make due with those and everyone else will go back to handfuls of OTC’s or just suffer in silence, right?
Riiiight.
All this ban will do is push people to the black market, where quality control is non-existent, and people will actually get ripped off or get really sick. They’re going to go from seeing a doctor who prescribes peptide therapies based on blood panels to drug dealers and shady websites that will send them anything from salad dressing to dirty bac water. That’s progress, right?
It’s infuriating what our government does in our name. Here’s to the ban. Who’s excited for what’s to come?
At the end of the day, the fat cats of Big Pharma will keep making tons of cash and cornering the market. Elected officials and regulatory agencies will continue to do what they’re told by the most powerful sectors of society. I used to think the bullseye was on bodybuilding supplements, but it’s really on anything that stands in the way of the big Fortune 500 companies making money. They don’t just own prescription drugs, but they also own food, car parts, electronics, and many more things. The little guy got muscled out decades ago. Even if we sign petitions and take to social media, no one (with power) will care. It’s all about profits over people and the sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner you just won’t give a f*ck anymore.
