You Need a Pep Talk
Donald Trump loves to dance to YMCA at his rallies. But while his messaging attempts to empower young men, his administration is actually setting them up for some tough times. Like the YMCA, the MAGA movement promises an America that features “everything for young men to enjoy.” But that pleasure will come at a cost. In this newsletter, I’ve repeatedly warned about the damage that online sports (and everything else) betting, now made pervasive by the so-called prediction markets, is doing to young men in particular. While some states have tried to keep prediction markets from offering gambling inside their borders — the latest effort comes from Utah, where the state has brought criminal charges against Kalshi — the Trump administration has done everything it can to protect prediction markets from regulation. (If you can’t already surmise that this strategy is tied to Trump family investments, you really haven’t been paying attention for the last couple years.) While gambling attacks and addicts the minds of young men, RFK Jr is helping peptides have the same impact on their bodies. “Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has unilaterally passed a rule that will allow specialty pharmacies to sell six specific peptide drugs, overruling scientists at the Food and Drug Administration. The peptides are popular among members of Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement, and many prominent MAHA figures and Kennedy allies sell them.” Social media influencers are already pushing unproven and untested peptides on a generation of young people trying to turn themselves into Macho Macho men, which has led to editorials like this one in The Lancet: Protect young people from the peptide boom.
+ “Peptides are the building blocks of proteins that play key roles for health. But the benefits and risks of supplementing with injectable peptides, which are popular on social media, are largely unknown.” Harvard Medical School: Peptides: What they are, potential benefits, and safety concerns.
+ Other than being a health-damaging quack, why would RFK Jr overrule his own FDA to promote untested peptides? You don’t need a prediction market to answer that question. The FDA “essentially banned peptides in 2023 because of safety concerns. But an FDA committee met in July to review the evidence on peptides and recommend whether or not to take the highly unusual step of allowing pharmacies to dispense them absent scientific review. The committee was made up of new appointees who consulted with or were employed by companies that were interested in promoting or dispensing peptides.” Lobbyists insist that legalizing these compounds will eliminate “the unsafe gray and black markets.” But, as is the case with prediction market non-rules, it’s more about keeping certain companies and individuals in the black; even if that means a generation of young men are turned into guinea pigs. Time: The Peptide Rush Has Begun.
