Think of it as an extreme form of vertical integration. The start-up now planning a “steroid Olympics” in Las Vegas has announced that it will now also start selling performance-enhancing peptides—bolstered by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s enthusiasm for the novel, untested compounds.
RFK Jr., the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, made his announcement during a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (naturally), where he vowed to loosen prior restrictions on 14 peptides put in place by the Biden-era U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company behind this coming May’s all-juiced Olympics in Vegas, Enhanced, announced Tuesday that it would start by offering five peptides via its new online health service.
Pending Kennedy’s promised deregulation, the company said it would also offer eight more peptides for sale, all compounds that the FDA had previously described as posing “potentially significant safety risks.” Among these eight risky injectables are peptides promising enhanced muscle growth, recovery, and cognitive ability.
And, judging from its press release, Enhanced sees real synergy potential between its upcoming “Enhanced Games” in Vegas and its online health services portal.
“The data we collect from our sporting business informs our strategy and allows Enhanced to be the brand consumers think about for all their longevity and performance needs,” the company’s CEO, Maximilian Martin, said in the statement.
Out of the ‘grey market,’ but still untested
RFK Jr. explained the logic behind his deregulation push to Rogan and his listeners last month as an effort to get experimental peptides “moved to a place where people have access from ethical suppliers.”
“I’m a big fan of peptides,” Kennedy told the podcast. “I‘ve used them myself and used them with really good effect.”
Broadly speaking, Kennedy’s premise is to shift the preexisting underground market for peptides back into the realm of your average corner pharmacy. Many people today—including obsessive fitness buffs, “looksmaxxing” incels, and some careerist biohackers in Silicon Valley—are already purchasing these peptides online (often from Chinese manufacturers) under the pretext that these items will be used as “research chemicals.”
“If you use a gray market peptide, you are essentially volunteering as a test subject in an uncontrolled experiment,” as Chris Mendias, a clinician-scientist who specializes in musculoskeletal rehabilitation and performance medicine, told Gizmodo earlier this month.
“For the gray market peptides, any ‘miracle’ recovery you feel is likely a potent contextual effect,” according to Mendias, co-owner of the Performance Medicine Institute in Arizona, “which is a placebo response amplified by the ritual of injections and the endorsements of influencers.”
The human body manufactures thousands of different kinds of peptides on its own. The chemicals are defined as simple chains of two or more amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and outside of proteins these peptides often act as hormones, neurotransmitters, or other messenger molecules inside the body. Some grey market peptides merely reproduce those molecules, while others offer more synthetic amino acid combinations.
With the FDA reportedly planning on taking 14 of these popular “grey market” peptides off the banned list this month, it remains unclear exactly what additional safeguards may come from their availability through local compounding pharmacies, which specialize in custom-made medicines.
‘American dominance on the world stage’
Enhanced counts among its investors at least two parties cozy with the current administration: Donald Trump Jr. via his 1789 Capital company and Peter Thiel, a billionaire advocate for human longevity science.
“This is about excellence, innovation and American dominance on the world stage—something the MAGA movement is all about,” Trump Jr. said of the planned Enhanced Games, according to coverage in the Financial Times last year.
The company’s founder, longtime Thiel ally Aron D’Souza, “has transitioned out of the company’s day-to-day operations,” according to a press release issued last November, however. And the move came as early coverage promising an event with roughly 100 athletes has dwindled down to about 40 competitors across three sports: swimming, athletics, and weightlifting.
D’Souza, who remains a shareholder, has described the event as a marker of humanity’s “right” or “duty” to “become enhanced,” as he told the Financial Times.
“And it’s not scary,” D’Souza said. “It’s not cheating, it’s not breaking the rules, it’s just inventing a new set of rules.”
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