RFK Jr.: "I'm A Big Fan Of Peptides. I've Used Them Myself And Used Them With Really Good Effect On A Couple Of Injuries"

[designing677]

Martin Shkreli Says Silicon Valley's Hottest Health Obsession Is A 'Delusion'​

BENZINGA

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

Martin Shkreli sees Silicon Valley’s peptide obsession as a “delusion,” firing back at Superpower co-founder and peptide advocate Max Marchione in a podcast debate.

The Debate​
Shkreli, who spent twenty years in pharma and made his career evaluating pharmaceutical compounds, says the whole category fails basic science since peptides break down in the body in seconds or minutes.

Without a known target, a binding mechanism, and real clinical data, he argues you don’t have a 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, who founded a health optimization platform that already sells peptides and is building out its offerings, fired back on X and in the TBPN debate.

What Are Peptides​
Peptides, such as insulin, are small proteins that have been used in medicine for decades.

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

The peptides driving the current craze go a lot further.

Compounds like BPC-157 and thymosin alpha-1 are manufactured in Chinese labs, sold online as “research chemicals,” and injected by Silicon Valley founders and biohackers chasing everything from gut healing to sex drive to better eye contact.

Joe Rogan calls his regimen the “wolverine stack,” yet most have never been through a proper human trial.

Peptides aren’t random synthetic chemicals but endogenous molecules your body already produces, uses, and clears, which gives them a fundamentally different risk profile than a novel drug.

The real reason most haven’t been through FDA trials isn’t that they don’t work.

It’s that many can’t be patented, so pharma has no commercial incentive to fund the approval pathway.

Marchione pointed to ketamine, once dismissed as just an anesthetic, which became one of the most important breakthroughs in depression treatment.

RFK Jr. Steps In​
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised to “end the war on peptides” and indicated action would be taken to make them more accessible.

The FDA has not taken any action yet, but if RFK Jr. gets his way, the compounds Shkreli calls delusion are about to become a lot more available.

A Polymarket contract on whether the FDA approves Lilly’s retatrutide, a next-generation peptide for obesity that has had 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

Because Martin Shkreli is an authority on anything...

 

[CNCCurrency]

I think it's his weird skin color that makes me think he's not well. I mean the guy can do a workout in jeans so he gets credit for that. But there is no way I'm following a science denier for medical advice.

Probably doing mt 2 grey

 

[tubby]

Because Martin Shkreli is an authority on anything...

He's actually pretty well informed from what I've seen of him. I obviously disagree with him on the topic of peptides, but it's interesting he'd stick his neck out with that sort of a take.

 

[designing677]

He's actually pretty well informed from what I've seen of him. I obviously disagree with him on the topic of peptides, but it's interesting he'd stick his neck out with that sort of a take.

I guess we've seen different things.

 

[lessthanhalf]

Unfortunately my comment on what I really think of RFK got removed, outside the US there are a few who support some of his ideas but the vast majority look on with horror at the idea of a vaccine denier and fundamentally anti science opportunist being in control of the health system there, I mean it is already pretty bad, with the highest expenditure per capita on health in the world by a large margin, with some of the worst health indices for a developed western nation. And vaccine deniers cause unnecessary deaths, especially in children, this is not opinion, just a fact and supported by scientific research.

Apart from the GLP's and a few others to some degree, in general the science does not support the use of most of the peptides, most have no human testing a few have a tiny bit, and no one thinks it is worthwhile to spend the large amounts of money required to do large scale studies to prove if they work or not, part of it is patent related, but it is mostly that they are not good enough to justify further research, or have broad effects on multiple receptor systems , so it is hard to have a complete understanding of what they might do. Researchers greatly prefer drugs with a single mode of action, with much lower chances of off target effects, so they don't end up spending millions on development only to find an unexpected off target effect that makes it non viable as a drug, and a lot of the time with modern tools it is easier to just design new molecules from scratch, or test vast libraries of molecules for the effect they want. There is effectively a near zero chance that the currently popular peptides will end up getting FDA approval ever, with one or 2 exceptions still being actively developed.

 

[CNCCurrency]

Unfortunately my comment on what I really think of RFK got removed, outside the US there are a few who support some of his ideas but the vast majority look on with horror at the idea of a vaccine denier and fundamentally anti science opportunist being in control of the health system there, I mean it is already pretty bad, with the highest expenditure per capita on health in the world by a large margin, with some of the worst health indices for a developed western nation. And vaccine deniers cause unnecessary deaths, especially in children, this is not opinion, just a fact and supported by scientific research.

Apart from the GLP's and a few others to some degree, in general the science does not support the use of most of the peptides, most have no human testing a few have a tiny bit, and no one thinks it is worthwhile to spend the large amounts of money required to do large scale studies to prove if they work or not, part of it is patent related, but it is mostly that they are not good enough to justify further research, or have broad effects on multiple receptor systems , so it is hard to have a complete understanding of what they might do. Researchers greatly prefer drugs with a single mode of action, with much lower chances of off target effects, so they don't end up spending millions on development only to find an unexpected off target effect that makes it non viable as a drug, and a lot of the time with modern tools it is easier to just design new molecules from scratch, or test vast libraries of molecules for the effect they want. There is effectively a near zero chance that the currently popular peptides will end up getting FDA approval ever, with one or 2 exceptions still being actively developed.

 

[tubby]

this is not opinion, just a fact

I mean if you have to make such a declaration, is it really? It sure sounds like an opinion.

 

[Habibibi]

Maybe if we reclassify vaccines as peptides, RFK will look kindly on them . Who wouldn't want the annual anti flu peptide?