The Great Peptide Debate with Martin Shkreli & Max Marchione

This is our full interview with Martin Shkreli and Max Marchione, recorded live on TBPN. We discuss the sharp divide between biotech orthodoxy and the rising peptide movement, unpack the fight over whether compounds like BPC-157 are dangerous gray-market hype or promising under-researched tools with real-world patient impact, and debate whether the FDA should hold the line on traditional evidence standards or adapt to a world where off-label experimentation, compounding, and anecdotal outcomes are already forcing the issue. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to podcast platforms immediately after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://Ramp.com AppLovin - https://axon.ai Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Cognition - https://cognition.ai Console - https://console.com CrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.com ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io Figma - https://figma.com Fin - https://fin.ai Gemini - https://gemini.google.com Graphite - https://graphite.com Gusto - https://gusto.com/tbpn Kalshi - https://kalshi.com Labelbox - https://labelbox.com Lambda - https://lambda.ai Linear - https://linear.app MongoDB - https://mongodb.com NYSE - https://nyse.com Okta - https://www.okta.com Phantom - https://phantom.com/cash Plaid - https://plaid.com Public - https://public.com Railway - https://railway.com Ramp - https://ramp.com Restream - https://restream.io Sentry - https://sentry.io Shopify - https://shopify.com Turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com Vanta - https://vanta.com Vibe - https://vibe.co Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  The peptide debate. Welcome to the stream, guys. How are you guys doing?

• 0:06Martin Shkreli?

  Hey, how's it going?

• 0:06Speaker 02

  Good, guys.

• 0:07John Coogan?

  Thank you so much for taking the time. Why don't you both start with an introduction on yourself and maybe your core thesis around peptides? Martin, why don't you go first?

• 0:19Martin Shkreli?

  Max, please.

• 0:19John Coogan?

  Oh, Max.

• 0:20Martin Shkreli?

  Okay, sure.

• 0:21John Coogan?

  All right, let's start with Martin.

• 0:22Martin Shkreli?

  Yep, so I'm the farmer, bro. I represent the interests and the, um, I don't know, I guess, viewpoint of the pharmaceutical industry, including, but not limited to Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, etc. I'm sure those guys love that. And, uh...

• 0:40Jordi Hays?

  You're the face of pharma, whether they like it or not.

• 0:43Martin Shkreli?

  There you go. Sort of a self-trained bio-pharmaceutical expert. I think I can speak at a pretty high level about every inch of the pharmaceutical industry. I've discovered brand-new drugs, I've acquired drugs, I've commercialized drugs, I've just about anything you can do in the drug industry, I've done it. And so, I'm very concerned about the peptide craze. I think it comes mostly out of psychological issues, which we'll discuss, the need for identity, control, distrust of institutions, all kinds of things like that are leading to what we're, what we're seeing today.

• 1:22John Coogan?

  Great. And Max?

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Max, former peptide skeptic turned peptide believer. I run a healthcare company called Superpower, and our thesis is that the health system today does a good job when you're sick. It doesn't do a fantastic job at preventing things and actually allowing people to be their best selves. I say a former peptide skeptic because they seem scary, and I say a converted believer because I spoke to dozens of doctors and heard hundreds of clinical vignettes from people who had their lives changed. Now, I don't believe all peptides are safe. I do believe we need more research, but I think there are a subset of things

• 2:06Speaker 02

  that have improved people's lives. I also think as a modality, peptides are one that are more interesting than before now that injecting is normal, now that wellness and optimization is normal, not just treating disease, and now that we have AI for things like computational discovery. So, we're early, we need more research, but I think peptides are exciting.

• 2:28John Coogan?

  Martin, I'll let you just respond.

• 2:30Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah.

• 2:30John Coogan?

  It seems like you have something on your mind. But it would be useful to at least define the the conversation a little bit more because when we say peptides, we could mean Ozempic prescribed by a doctor for someone who has diabetes and is very overweight. It could also mean the Wolverine stack taken by a 15 year old in a gym in Miami, right? And like, there's a wide gap here, so let's maybe narrow it down a little bit to probably off-label use. I don't know exactly where where the where things start to get fuzzy for you guys, but defining a little bit more of where the actual point of debate, because I imagine that there's agreement with the extremes.

• 3:13Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, I mean, isn't there a problem when we have to redefine semantics that have been defined forever?

• 3:18John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 3:19Martin Shkreli?

  Isn't this like, somebody saying, you know, I'm using, you know, GPT instead of using AI or something like that?

• 3:26John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 3:26Martin Shkreli?

  Like, there's a specific meaning, like peptide has this very specific meaning, and they're not new. They're 80 years old, people have been using peptides forever. And in fact, in pharma, you try to avoid peptides because of their inherent weaknesses. You go for small molecules or really large molecules like antibodies. Peptides are sort of the worst of both worlds. So the idea that we've taken this kind of like, last place drug class, and then turn that into like, the the standard bearer for do-it-yourself medicine is is kind of humorous to anybody who actually understands pharma.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Except that the last, the last drug class has the potentially most impactful drug of all time, or set of drugs of all time, the GLP-1 receptor agonists. So I'm not saying we only have peptides in the toolkit. I'm saying the genie's out of the bottle, and we cannot ignore peptides as a tool in the toolkit. Small molecules, just like, I guess framing framing it for people who don't kind of understand the difference between these things. Small molecules are made synthetically. Peptides tend to be derived from what already is happening in the body. Our DNA is the building block of the body, and encodes for RNA, which produces proteins and peptides. So these peptides naturally occur. Now, it can sometimes be hard to patent naturally occurring. I think you can, but it's a little bit harder. Small molecules, on the other hand, are things

• 4:42Speaker 02

  that humans designed to block biology, to block, typically block, something that is happening in the body. And again, I'm not saying small molecules are bad, but they're, they're kind of the, the two different modalities we're talking about here. And we've seen one category of peptides, GLP-1 has already changed the world. And my contention is that there are other categories of peptides that are under researched, but have really interesting kind of clinical vignettes that might change the world going forward.

• 5:08John Coogan?

  Martin?

• 5:09Jordi Hays?

  But, but, but, but the, but the, but I think like why we're having this conversation is because people are just, you know, injecting a, a number of them into themselves now, and you're saying they might change the world, but people are going through the process of self experimentation. And there's a bunch of companies, private companies, that are happily facilitating this and, and profiting off of it when it seems to be a large number of risks that are still unknown. At least that's my, my point of view.

• 5:41Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 5:44John Coogan?

  So, so, so maybe, maybe let's start with, uh, uh, stuff that's not fully FDA approved. I think the canonical example would be like the Chinese peptides, the retas, the stuff you buy online and inject. And it's based on some interesting scientific literature, but it hasn't actually been through the full FDA process yet. Where do both of you stand on that?

• 6:07Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah. I mean, why, why do you have a right to pirate somebody's intellectual property?

• 6:11John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 6:11Martin Shkreli?

  You know, this, this is, this is the property of Eli Lilly. They discovered it. They spent billions of dollars on it. You want to steal it? You want to work with a Chinese company stealing it? I mean, that's not good for America. That's not good for the drug industry. And guess where these, where do these drugs come from? They come from American R and D labs. And if you keep stealing them and pirating them. In this like weird Twilight like, you know, DIY drug system, which is not very large, at least compared to pharma, you know, I don't know if you make a big impact, but if it went very large scale, you would. I mean, you'd stop having drugs, the same way pirating music would, you know, have huge ramifications for the music ecosystem.

• 6:51Martin Shkreli?

  So you have to respect intellectual property to some extent. And then taking a retinotrite, which is just sort of a GLP plus, if you will, instead of just waiting it for it to be FDA approved, or like, using Ozempic, I think this is like the worst risk reward decision you could possibly make. It's like some of the decisions I used to make in the past. You know, what is your upside to taking illegally manufactured retinotrite from some other place and you can't verify it, et cetera, versus just taking Ozempic? The people that are take peptides and have these peptide stacks are mostly people in SF, maybe New York, they're very wealthy people, they don't know what the rest of the world looks like. Nobody else in middle America is excited to do this. It's not

• 7:36Martin Shkreli?

  normal, Max, to inject yourself with things. You know, this isn't like a thing everyone should be doing. And so, to me, the retinotrite case is really insane, because this is a drug that Eli Lilly is going to get approved eventually. And the fact that, you know, there are people dying of certain terrible diseases, and they need compassionate use, they need to get on extension programs. But nobody needs retinotrite now, right now, before FDA approval.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  So I think the things we agree on are that the existing FDA approved GLP-1 receptor agonists are an interesting category of drug, and they're a peptide, and they're impactful. I think we also agree that companies should not do things illegally and infringe on the patent for retinotrite, right? I do think the patent system incentivizes innovation. I think the crux of where we disagree is not, and just quickly on the, this is an SF thing, that is not true. If you speak, I know dozens of people who own these research use companies, and if you speak to them, the majority of their audience is middle America, not SF tech bros, despite the tech bros being noisy on Twitter. I think the crux of where we probably disagree is the 14 or so peptides that RFK has said they might move from category one, two, meaning they cannot be compounded, back to category

• 8:47Speaker 02

  one, meaning they can be compounded. And I guess my like, general statement here is that people are taking these compounds, right? They're already using them at scale. Right? And the way to minimize risk, the main way to minimize risk is to move them from category two to category one, right? To legalize them. Because the risky thing is the dodgy supply chain we have today. The risky thing-

• 9:10Jordi Hays?

  Well, isn't the, isn't the risk, isn't, isn't the risky thing just doing like massive sort of unofficial, you know, human trials when we don't know?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  No, I, I don't think so. So I think, I think that is true for peptides that we do not have longitudinal clinical experience and patient experience with. But let's take something like BPC157, which is one of the most controversial ones. So let's, let's go right to the meat of things. Let's take something like BPC157. My contention is that thousands of doctors prescribe this, they do, and have prescribed this for- You can't prescribe this drug. Uh, they give it to their patients, right? You can prescribe it, give it to their patients. It's not a drug. Thousands do that. What? My statement is not the semantics of prescribing. My statement is thousands do

• 10:02Speaker 02

  this. My other statement is that millions of patients have taken this. At least hundreds of thousands, I believe millions, have taken this.

• 10:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  And that clinical experience, again, is not an RCT, but we cannot ignore it. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

• 10:15John Coogan?

  Okay, okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It, it sounds like there's some sort of fundamental disagreement here about like the way BPC157 is being distributed right now because I know people that have told me that they've taken it. I thought that they were getting it prescribed or recommended to them. Like, Martin, what is your-

• 10:33Jordi Hays?

  We can agree that it's being given to them.

• 10:36John Coogan?

  I think, I think they're getting it, but what's actually, what's actually happening here? How is this happening?

• 10:41Jordi Hays?

  It's being, it's being out, out in the back alley. They meet in the back alley.

• 10:45John Coogan?

  It doesn't seem like that. It seems like, it seems like there are doctors that do have the ability to-

• 10:49Speaker 02

  There are many of the best doctors in the world. So when I was first introduced to peptides, one of the most esteemed doctors in the US said to me, Max, you take so many supplements. Have you explored peptides? Because I think there are really interesting modality with a few decades of clinical use.

• 11:01John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Right? And I, when he said that to me, I was like, no way. This is, this is bullshit. I'm not injecting myself with something. That was weird. So what I did is I went around to around 20 different doctors whose- Should have trusted your gut. Who, who, who, who, who, whose opinions I respect. And I asked them about peptides. And normally, when you ask these doctors about anything, you ask them about red meat, you ask them about spinach, they're all divided. They're all like, one view, another view, punches with peptides. Just about all of them, except one, said, these are really interesting. I have used these in my patients.

• 11:32John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  I believe the endogenous molecules, peptides that exist in our body are going to be the future of medicine. And those doctors have the incentive to not be wrong. If they're wrong, they could go to jail. If they're wrong, they can have their license stripped. If they're wrong, patients don't come back to them. So they have the maximum incentive. And for 10 to 20 years, they still give this to their patients, and their patients say, my life changed. Now, you might say it's placebo. My statement is, the patient says their life changes, and the doctor sees that.

• 11:58John Coogan?

  Okay, Martin, I want you to react, but but I also want you to to sort of set aside the intellectual property argument. I I like that argument, but let's focus on the the what doctors are doing, how BPCY157 is being delivered, that type of thing.

• 12:12Martin Shkreli?

  So so I'm a drug hunter, right? People like me, Vivek Ramaswamy, we look all around the world for medicine to buy and medicines to put into companies that great firms like A16Z and Founders Fund and other more healthcare maybe focused firms will fund, take it to the IPO, which I've done before, and get paid huge amounts of money. That's what I do. That's what I'm good at. That's why I'm the farmer bro. BPC157 is the biggest scam I've ever seen. It does absolutely nothing. There's no redeemable value to this. Do you know the story about it? Do you guys know?

• 12:41John Coogan?

  No, please tell us.

• 12:43Martin Shkreli?

  This guy in Croatia made it, Sichic, my my hinterland brother. And, you know, the only publications about this drug are by him. Nobody else has published about this drug. It's it's not a drug, in fact. Nobody's even confirmed that it it's a peptide from the gastric juice, as he claimed. Nobody can find a sequence that matches that, and the gastric juice of human beings has been thoroughly profiled. It's it's a 15-mer peptide, so it's 15 amino acids. Half-life is minutes. There's no plausible physiological basis for it to work and it's it's been in clinical trials. Pleva was a local drug company in the Balkans, very well respected, my ad.

• 13:25Martin Shkreli?

  Pleva actually licensed BPC and tried to do clinical trials for it and guess what? They failed. So this this like weird like.

• 13:33John Coogan?

  So do you think it's placebo effect? Do you think placebo effect? Because yeah, I talked to people that say it's good for recovery and I can imagine if you're sticking yourself with something, you might feel like, ah, I'm less sore today.

• 13:45Martin Shkreli?

  While you while you are recovering, you think that the drug is helping you. And of course it isn't. It's the recovery process you're going through and there's a there's an app for this. If you want to make real money, go make BPC in CGMP conditions and go do a clinical trial. And you can be a trillion dollar company like Eli Lilly. Instead, you can putz around, you know, buying fake Chinese stuff and then injecting yourself and dreaming that you're doing well. I have a drug here that if I take might also aid my recovery.

• 14:12John Coogan?

  No, no, no.

• 14:13Martin Shkreli?

  Should I try this? Should I tell you that it worked for me? It's an N of one. Oh, my God, I did so great with this N of one. Uh, you know, it healed my recovery. Like, this is nonsense. This is not science. Science is controlled experiments that are well done, very, very carefully documented and so forth. Why are we going backwards? Why do we go forwards in civilization and society? What is this urge by the valley? And I blame the valley to go backwards in time and space.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  I hear your view and I think other people have it. And we don't know whether these are placebo or not yet. We can't make a definitive statement and we don't have the RCT.

• 14:51Jordi Hays?

  Wait, but I thought you I thought you said there was studies done on BBC 157.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  No, there aren't. There are no human studies done.

• 15:01Martin Shkreli?

  There was one done by Pleva and it failed.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Okay, one study. There are dozens of studies of drugs that become commercialized that previously failed. Anyway, my view is we don't know whether it's placebo or not yet. That is true and some people say it's placebo, some will say it's not. My statement is really simple, which is you can have Martin's view or you can have the view of thousands of doctors who have used this for 10 to 20 years and have their license in the line. The view of millions of patients who talk about their lives changing. You can have that view. My dad's visiting from Australia and he's been taking painkillers for the past four months and can't walk upstairs because his back is bad. He took BBC 157 for three days and he said to me, Max, this is the first time in four months I haven't taken a painkiller. Again, I'm not saying this isn't placebo. I'm saying we don't know. What I'm saying is I am God. I'm really happy my dad's not on a painkiller.

• 15:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Right. My co-founder, he lost three organs in hospital. He had an autoimmune disease. They put him in biologics. He took BBC 157. He's off biologics and he doesn't have an autoimmune disease anymore.

• 15:58Martin Shkreli?

  So put your money where your mouth is.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  We will put our money where our mouth is and fund the studies.

• 16:02Martin Shkreli?

  Put your money where your mouth is. Exactly.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  But we can't ignore the real world evidence. Again.

• 16:07Martin Shkreli?

  Well, you are ignoring it if you're not putting your money where your mouth is. If you believe that's true.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  No, we are.

• 16:12Martin Shkreli?

  No, no, no.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  We are.

• 16:13Martin Shkreli?

  Do a, do a clinical trial.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  We are.

• 16:16Martin Shkreli?

  Tell me about it.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  We're, we're, we're, we're in the process of chatting with the people required to set up a clinical trial for this because we will put our money where our mouth is because I've seen thousands of doctors, millions of patients, and even the FDA, right, who have said they're going to start legalizing, even the FDA.

• 16:31John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 16:32Martin Shkreli?

  But Max.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  You can have your view and I don't, that's okay. People will have that view. I will have an opinion and I'll put my money where my mouth is.

• 16:37Martin Shkreli?

  Max, you've never done a clinical trial before, right? You, you've never invested in drug companies before, but you want to do your first clinical trial on, on this drug, which you did in an event. You know, you see, you've heard anecdotal evidence about. Why?

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Because I have seen thousands of doctors, millions of patients over one to two decades, right? Go say to my friend, um, go back on biologics. Go back to hospital, lose another organ. Go say, go, go say to my dad, go back on painkillers every single day. I don't want my dad on painkillers every single day. Now, you might say that's placebo. I say I don't know, but I say with the evidence that we currently have, I believe there is more.

• 17:16Martin Shkreli?

  You should see, you should see what this Galaxy Gas does for me. It's amazing.

• 17:19John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 17:21Martin Shkreli?

  It's really good.

• 17:22Jordi Hays?

  No, but what's your question? Is your question, Martin, more that like, okay, you, you take.

• 17:27Martin Shkreli?

  No pharma guy in their right mind would do this.

• 17:29John Coogan?

  Well, hold on, hold on. Uh, so no pharma guy would do it. Max clearly believes in this and, and what is the intersection of these two things? Is it possible to do the type of study that you're talking about with Silicon Valley backing? Is a $30 million Series A enough to get started?

• 17:48Martin Shkreli?

  Absolutely.

• 17:49John Coogan?

  Or do you need to go to Wall Street IPO, do the biotech thing?

• 17:51Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, you can. I mean, plenty of private, plenty of private companies do this. Okay. Hundreds, if not, actually, I would say there's thousands of private biotechs. Okay. Generally, they would pass on something like this.

• 18:02Jordi Hays?

  Well, yeah, yeah. So why, so, so there's this body of, body of anecdotal evidence.

• 18:08Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, unpublished.

• 18:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so certainly a, a drug hunter, certainly a drug hunter would have looked at this already, right?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Martin, is your statement, the only admissible evidence is an RCT?

• 18:22Martin Shkreli?

  Yes.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  And what about all of, all of the examples of when something works? Before anything works with an RCT, there's a time when it works pre-RCT.

• 18:31Martin Shkreli?

  Yes, in animals.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Uh, no, in humans, there are times.

• 18:35Martin Shkreli?

  In animals.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  When before there's an RCT.

• 18:37Martin Shkreli?

  Yes, it does happen sometimes, yes.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:39Martin Shkreli?

  They're intelligently, because they're intelligently designed drugs.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 18:44Martin Shkreli?

  That were designed to do a specific thing.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 18:46Martin Shkreli?

  And they do the specific thing and then they work.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yep.

• 18:50Martin Shkreli?

  This is not that.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  And you think your statement, your singular statement of placebo outweighs the, again, we don't know, but I'm saying on the facts we have today. There is more to support the fact this is more likely than not placebo.

• 19:03Martin Shkreli?

  No, no, I would, I would bet anything. I would, I would bet anything. No trial of BPC would work.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Okay, I guess we'll see.

• 19:11Jordi Hays?

  Uh, what else? So, so Max, are you, is superpower facilitating people getting BPC 157 today?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  No, we won't sell anything that is not legal to compound. But I, I believe the FDA will make it legal to compound soon.

• 19:26Martin Shkreli?

  And then you'd be.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  And I believe the FDA should make it legal to compound because the genie's out of the bottle. People have seen their lives changed and they're getting it anyway.

• 19:33Jordi Hays?

  What else, what else are, what, what else are you excited about? Because when people say, when people, people say peptides with an S, so.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  The most now for one. The most now for one is fascinating. It proves in 35 countries. I take and I never get sick. I used to get sick four or five times a year. I had the most elaborate immune stacks. None of those elaborate immune stacks, 100 things placebo meat. Thymostenafin, everyone around me had COVID a few months back and I didn't get it. A bunch of people around me had influenza, I didn't get it. Every time I get a sore throat, I take BBC157, Thymostenafin1 and the sore throat disappears. Now, this is a drug that is approved in 35 countries, right? Has some human data. Now, pharma in the US hasn't brought it through trials because they can't patent something that had existed for several years. So I think Thymostenafin1 is a really interesting one as well.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Okay, Martin, your reaction?

• 20:27Martin Shkreli?

  Well, drug companies can and do patent things that have existed before.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  I agree with that. I did not say that. I said Thymostenafin1 in the form that is approved in other countries, they cannot patent.

• 20:37Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, I mean, you don't even have to patent a drug, right? You can get seven years orphan exclusivity, five years of NCE exclusivity. There's a lot of ways to make money in pharma. And pharma, if you haven't noticed-

• 20:48Speaker 02

  So I agree with that. I agree that they could find some rare disease indication and use Thymostenafin1 against it and get a patent. My statement is that they could not get a composition of matter patent for Thymostenafin1 in the way that doctors and patients are using it today.

• 21:01Martin Shkreli?

  Sure, I mean, you can change molecules too. I mean, there's a lot of ways-

• 21:05Speaker 02

  I know, why would they-

• 21:06Martin Shkreli?

  -in medicine.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  And so we're saying the machinery of the FDA requires something works, we see in 35 countries, the only way to get it patented is we've got to change the molecule and spend 300 million to 3 billion dollars. What is that? What is that for a system? Right? That's what's regulatory capture by pharma to me.

• 21:23Martin Shkreli?

  I wouldn't say that necessarily. I think that there are benefits to making drugs stronger. Like I said earlier, drugs, peptides are the weakest form of drug. They're not the-

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Except the best, maybe the best drug of all time's a peptide.

• 21:38Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, but it's very, it's one of very few. I would say 5% of drugs by revenue-

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Today, today, right? Five years ago, we didn't even have GLP-1. 10 years ago, we didn't really have GLP-1.

• 21:49Martin Shkreli?

  Peptides were and probably always will be a backwater just because they're very weak. They have no pharmacological- Properties that are beneficial like like a good half-life. And in fact, the naked peptide GLPs don't work either. They have to be heavily modified by pharmaceutical chemistry.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  We know this is not true. There's an FDA approves peptide with a very short half-life, semirelin. Though most Napa one has a very short half-life.

• 22:16Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, no, no, there are drugs that can work.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Long half-life to have an effect. We know this, we know this, the FDA knows. Thirty-five percent of other countries know this.

• 22:23Martin Shkreli?

  There are some drugs that that can work with short half-life. But almost every drug guy will tell you that you want a long half-life. So you don't have to keep taking the drug. There are some drugs.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Correct, and that is fine. And we have methods now with science to extend the half-life of these compounds. And that's part of where the research is going.

• 22:39Martin Shkreli?

  This is called pharmaceuticals.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct, correct.

• 22:42Martin Shkreli?

  That's what the industry is. We have an FDA for it. We have all these rules for it. And I don't think we should change that. I mean, these are the the things that have made American pharmaceuticals one of the greatest industries ever. To to start to move away from evidence-based medicine is is a, you know, is potentially very risky and scary thing.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  I think the riskier thing is there being a gray market. Because the genie's out of the bottle and people are getting these regardless. I think it's far safer to get them through GMP-certified compounding pharmacies in the way that the FDA has oversight over, rather than the state we're in today, which is the gray market. And it's isn't a debate between no peptide and legal. It's a debate between gray market or white market. And I contend white market is net less harm, net higher benefit for the US people.

• 23:29Martin Shkreli?

  I think we should treat them like we treat controlled substances, right? I mean, why that there's a very specific set of laws that states what you're allowed to traffic on interstate commerce or not. And you need a BLA or an NDA or a 505B2 to traffic a drug across interstate commerce in the United States of America. And that that changing that, I don't think is useful or helpful. No matter how many people on Reddit think that they want to play Dr. House today, that's not something that, you know, they should be engaged in.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  So this is why I think they need to be legalized, because I don't think what we have today is safe. I don't think people going to gray market pharmacies and injecting anything into their body is safe. What I do think is far safer and net lower harm and high benefit to the American people is these things being regulated in category one and produced in GMP certified facilities and prescribed by doctors. That is safer. So the net harm reducing case is making these category one illegal to be prescribed by doctors. Not all of them, but the ones where we have a sufficient safety signal and a sufficient effectiveness signal.

• 24:32Martin Shkreli?

  Well, there is an arbitrator for that already. It's called the FDA. I mean, why would you want a second, I guess, special, like special ed version of the FDA for drugs that didn't quite make it so clearly efficacious?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  What I'm saying is many of these things the FDA might not ever want to research because the patent is hard, because they target wellness and prevention and human optimization rather than disease, and the FDA loves their cancer therapeutics. And my statement is if we have sufficient safety and efficacy signals, we reduce net harm by making them legal today, we reduce net harm, and try saying to the person who used to be in biologics with autoimmune disease, you have to wait 20 years for something that might never be researched by Big Pharma, right? Try saying to my daddy who was on painkillers for the past four months every single day, that you know what, this compound you took for three days that has been used for two decades? Go back to your painkillers. Try saying that to them.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  And maybe, maybe one day Pharma, maybe in 10, 15 years will research this. We don't even know. Say that to them.

• 25:38John Coogan?

  Martin, it sounds like there's a sort of a mischaracterization of your argument that I'll let you push back on, that you're arguing that the FDA has no problems, that the FDA is perfectly efficient. And that seems crazy. I feel like everyone's upset with every aspect of the government all the time. Are you saying that the FDA is anywhere near approving, anywhere near to the speed required to approve new drugs, new research as quickly as they could?

• 26:13Martin Shkreli?

  I'd say they're pretty good. Really? You know, I hate almost every part of the US government. Okay. But that's, that's, that's one I do like. And I advise the US government. And, and I feel like this is something that, you know, could not be further from our, our collective benefit. Companies love making money.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  You're saying you prefer the gray market?

• 26:35Martin Shkreli?

  No, I prefer no market.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  But we don't have the choice of no market.

• 26:38Martin Shkreli?

  Yes, we do.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  The genie is out of the bottle.

• 26:40Martin Shkreli?

  What does that mean?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  It's out of the bottle.

• 26:42Martin Shkreli?

  What does that mean, genie mean?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  What that means?

• 26:44Martin Shkreli?

  We can arrest the genie. We can give the genie.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Cocaine, cocaine in the eighties. Doctors have prescribed these compounds and they're doing everything they possibly can to get their hands on them. And that can be very risky. And what I'm saying is we have safety and efficacy signals and millions of patients, thousands of doctors in 10 to 20 years.

• 27:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, so, so Max is arguing that like a war on drugs will not work. It hasn't worked in the past. It is impossible to.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Why would you want a war on peptides?

• 27:11John Coogan?

  No, no, no, no, because, because if these are, if it's gray market, that means illegal. Like Martin is arguing that we can arrest the genie, but can we, Martin? Can we actually arrest the genie? Because it seems like there's a lot of genies. And you had a product behind you that I think might be not legal either. And that was probably available in a corner store. And I know that there are dozens of illegal flavored e-cigarettes and vaporizers that come over and they make their way into bodegas all over the United States. And like, this just happens.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  And those things are provably harmful. And they still, the provably harmful things do it. I'm saying these things, doctors have their license on the line.

• 27:47Martin Shkreli?

  I don't think doctors like, I don't think doctors want to recommend peptides. I don't think doctors like recommending non FDA approved drugs. I, I've never met one that did.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Well, I know thousands of doctors who do, and I'm saying.

• 27:58Martin Shkreli?

  Thousands of doctors? I don't know thousands of doctors. I spent my whole life in medicine.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Thousands is such a big number.

• 28:02John Coogan?

  So many doctors.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  And, and what I'm saying is, I agree, they shouldn't recommend things gray market. What I'm saying is let's legalize because that is net safer for the American people.

• 28:13John Coogan?

  Yes, and Martin, you're saying that, you're saying that you can win? You're saying, you're saying that, that if we hang out in the gray market, you think it's actually possible to shut down gray market activity? Is that true?

• 28:24Martin Shkreli?

  I think you can shut it down. And then I also think that we have a perfectly great system, which is the normal regulatory body we've had for 60 years.

• 28:33Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 28:33Martin Shkreli?

  And creating, like I said, a new special ed version of it for drugs that couldn't quite get on the school bus.

• 28:39Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 28:40Martin Shkreli?

  You know, is not something that we should do because we have a rigorous way to determine if drugs work or not.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Let's get rid of all gray market. And my friend can go back on biologics.

• 28:51Martin Shkreli?

  We should.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Go back on painkillers.

• 28:53Martin Shkreli?

  You should.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  All of the farmer can continue making hundreds of thousands of dollars from these biologics. Let's do that. Sure. And you know what? We're not going to shut that. You get what I'm saying?

• 29:03Jordi Hays?

  Closing arguments. One more thing. So Martin, your stance is generally that these drugs just haven't proven to be that good. They've been around for long enough that a bunch of smart pharma bros and sisters would have like, you know, taken them through trials already if they really showed.

• 29:20Martin Shkreli?

  We take a lot of bad stuff through trials.

• 29:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:22Martin Shkreli?

  You know, BPC isn't even, doesn't even come close to the muster of a pharma bro.

• 29:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Okay. And so it's, it's, it's weak. You're saying there's a placebo that you think is probably real. But then what is the, what is the risk? Right? Because if somebody's saying like, okay, it's a weak drug. I maybe get a placebo effect. Maybe, maybe, maybe it just helps. But why should somebody Avoid these. Avoid it entirely, regardless of if they're available on the gray market or on this like, you know, new version of the FDA.

• 29:54Martin Shkreli?

  I just think we shouldn't normalize making drugs in your bathtub. I think that, you know, there's, there's no evidence that any of these things are well made. I think we should leave medicine to the experts. I think that's something ASV is very reluctant to do. Many people want to feel in a world where maybe they feel like they're losing control. They want to control this thing or the world where we're losing confidence in government. We want to take this into our own hands. And it's just not the way to do things. Medicine has progressed dramatically thanks to the capitalist system and the biopharmaceutical system in league with the FDA, which doesn't always get it right, but is quite good. And you know, thanks to that, we have drugs for cystic fibrosis. We have a cure for cystic fibrosis. We have drugs for SMA. We have these terrible diseases. And one last thing

• 30:39Martin Shkreli?

  is that a lot of these people in SV, you're perfectly healthy. You know, you're talking about two sick people there a second ago, but most of the people I know on these peptides, they're taking the modafinil, they're taking drugs for diseases they don't have. And this is not, you know, a great use of people's time or great for their health. And in some, to some extent, the government does exist to help protect people from themselves and their own stupidity.

• 31:04Jordi Hays?

  And then Max, you're planning to take BBC 157 through clinical trials. Are you planning to take any of these other peptides through?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:17Jordi Hays?

  And then what is the, where does that ultimately, where does that ultimately go?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're working with a handful of different biotech companies that are taking these through clinical trials. We're in the early days of setting that up. And my statement is not anti FDA or anti the machinery we have. I think it solves a lot of purposes. I just think it doesn't solve all purposes. And my statement is not that the current system is always perfectly right. I think when new data comes along, when new science comes along, when there's a dangerous gray market, we need to accept that the times have changed and adapt the regulation. It has, solves a lot of purposes. There are many parts of it that are exceptional, but it is not complete.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  And I'm saying that we should do what the FDA has said they're doing, which is legalize several of the category two peptides that have the strongest safety and efficacy signals, because that reduces net harm for patients and increases net benefit, even if pharma doesn't necessarily like it because they're not making money from their $100,000 biologic drug anymore.

• 32:26John Coogan?

  Sure. Martin, any closing statements? It's been great.

• 32:30Martin Shkreli?

  Yeah, I just want to say pharma did try to develop BPC and failed.

• 32:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, okay, we went through that. It's a good point. Well, thank you so much for joining today. Thank you to you both. Everyone had a great time.

• 32:41Jordi Hays?

  Good job keeping it civil, boys.

• 32:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, very civil.

• 32:44Jordi Hays?

  Very civil, very professional.

• 32:45John Coogan?

  Love to do this again, again, the next time a new peptide goes viral, we'd love to have you both on the show, independently or together. Have a great rest of your day, have a great week, and we will talk to you soon.

• 32:55Jordi Hays?

  Great stuff.

• 32:56John Coogan?

  Goodbye. Bye, Max. TBPN's daily newsletter has op-eds that are written by Jordi and I. In addition to top tech headlines and the timeline's best posts, sign up for free at tbpn.com.