The PMC MDPI-fed Pep Rally

Peptides have been embraced by MAHA and its ilk, even as they “shadow ban” mRNA vaccines by dismissing actual scientific findings to fit political propaganda, calling careful and reasonable studies inadequate.

• And because money talks, celebrities are jumping on the MAHA bandwagon, with Jennifer Aniston and Dua Lipa promoting a cow colostrum powder called Armra. Like the collagen peptides above, you can also get it at Target.
  • Sales are up 3,000% from two years earlier despite no clear evidence of benefit.
  • Money and politics make for strange bedfellows — celebrities, health cranks, cows, and as we’ll see, gastric juice.

Back to peptides — to summarize a recent post on “Science-Based Medicine,” scientists know a lot about peptides, and more than a hundred have been approved by the FDA, from insulin in 1923 to today’s GLP-1 drugs. Scientifically-proven peptide drugs can be prescribed for diabetes, osteoporosis, chronic pain, and rare genetic disorders. It’s not like we don’t know what does and doesn’t work here.

Today, the big money is in peptide clinics and naturopathic centers infusing gullible rich people afeard of their own mortality — in San Diego, you can join one such center called LIVV (cute, but obvious) for a $10,000 initiation fee and $995 per month thereafter. Their peptides are branded “LIVV Forever,” of course.

• Eric Topol explored this racket extensively last summer.

But rather than rehashing the well-known peptide grift, let’s talk about how the OA infrastructure built to promote pay-to-play articles is being exploited by peptide grifters — up to and including US government servers.