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A brief history of oral peptides
- ydai0531 9mo agogreat read!
- Kaminsk13 9mo agoI'm not sure why the hims investors ever thought that this was legal
- kps 9mo agoThe charitable assumption is that investors weren't aware it was a problem.
- InsideOutSanta 9mo agoThey probably didn't, they just took the bet that this was one of the crimes that are currently legal, like crypto scams, environmental crimes, bribery, and tay evasion for the rich.
- sincerely 9mo agoHims has donated $1M to the current administration, which supports this theory
- JasonADrury 9mo agoPretty sure you don't have to be rich to get away with avoiding Taylor Swift.
- badrequest 9mo agoSome of the most profitable ventures this century have been objectively illegal, but when you know you won't go to prison for violating the law, why would you care to follow it?
- pixl97 9mo agoThe process of chlorinating water was first done illegally.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoAlso: human dissection (grave robbing) translating the Bible into English silk production outside of China (death penalty for exporting worm eggs) rubber production in Asia (seeds smuggled out of Brazil) the Underground Railroad heliocentrism AIDS treatment (see Dallas Buyers Club) Needle exchange programs for IV drug users Ridesharing/airbnb/napster (obvious ones) SF gay marriage licenses (in defiance of CA law)
- graemep 9mo agoTranslating the Bible into English was not illegal. I very much doubt Bede or the monks of Lindisfarne were breaking the law! The same for heliocentrism. No one took Copernicus to court. With silk and rubber the smuggling was illegal, the actual cultivation was not Grave robbing was illegal (and still is) but dissection was not. Needle exchange was illegal in some US states but was legal in many other countries.
- chihuahua 9mo agoReference to support the claim that translating the bible into English was banned (William Tyndale was executed for doing it): https://nobimu.no/en/subject-articles/banned-translations-of-the-bible https://nobimu.no/en/subject-articles/banned-translations-of... You can nitpick that "the church executing people for it" is not exactly the same as "illegal" but that's missing the point.
- yorwba 9mo agoUnauthorized Bible translations were prohibited in England at the time, but Tyndale was executed in the Netherlands, where there was no such ban: https://books.google.de/books?id=mfZlsUVYClwC&pg=P315&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1 https://books.google.de/books?id=mfZlsUVYClwC&pg=P315&source...
- nerdsniper 9mo agoIt probably is legal at the moment, but the rules may be changed to make it illegal. But also Uber and Lyft were super illegal when they were invested in. To some extent, YCombinator partners are on the record[0] supporting the idea of their startups doing illegal things. Generally they'll frame this as challenging outdated regulations, but they acknowledge that the founders whose strategies they fully support sometimes come into office hours and discuss how they're worried that the strategy puts them at risk of going to jail. There are different kinds of illegal, and Hims/Hers may end up getting blocked from their current business model, or they may end up entrenching new ways for consumers to get affordable care. The jury is very much still out. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm-ZIiwiN1o&t=8m46s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm-ZIiwiN1o&t=8m46s
- refulgentis 9mo ago> Hims/Hers may end up getting blocked from their current business model, or they may end up entrenching new ways for consumers to get affordable care Well, no: the thing that's a lot cheaper is a placebo at best, and they were just referred to the DOJ for prosecution. The rest is more expensive
- nerdsniper 9mo agoHims offered semaglutide for $99/month. That’s a 90% discount on unsubsidized consumer prices for injectable semaglutide. I also don’t see any evidence that they sold a placebo, but I’m just catching up now, perhaps I missed where they’re selling something with a different active ingredient which does not work.
- simulator5g 9mo agoIts in the article that you didn't read lol
- nerdsniper 9mo agoI've since read TFA, as well as many other articles, official correspondence, and case law around the issue. I understand that without the additional ingredients of SNAC/sodium caprate/sodium caprylate, the bioavailability is probably too low to have a clinical effect at oral doses <15mg/day. I read the actual FDA referral to the DOJ. They don't mention anything about any of what this article touches on. It's not clear that the referral makes correct claims about anything illegal going on. In statements, the FDA says that compounding pharmacies "cannot state compounded drugs use the same active ingredient as the FDA-approved drugs". That's a very brand-new interpretation of rules, and might not stand up to judicial scrutiny. In the context of "shouldn't investors have known that Hims business model is illegal??" -- it makes sense that investors couldn't have known ahead of time that the FDA would claim this. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/hims-hers-health-inc-dba-hers-09092025 https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
- marticode 9mo agoAFAIK it's a meme stock, reality doesn't matter anymore than it matters for Tesla or Gamestock.
- refulgentis 9mo agoI am bored to tears by this and it is simultaneously heart-breaking. My MD friend wasted $100K on MicroStrategy, ignoring my advice when he asked for it a couple months ago, and he's like "It's fine I'm not 65." and then proceeded to explain he absolutely should hold it because Trump will add it to Bitcoin strategic reserve. Been following the market for 30 years and I've never seen loss per share > $10. They lost $42/share. Didn't make a dent in our conversation, I think he just ignored it twice.
- loeg 9mo agoInvestors, or management?
- Boot2Root 9mo agoAppreciate the perspective on the risk of dubious formulations. Consequences are far more than cosmetic.
- celltalk 9mo agoIt’s a great read but is this really the history of oral peptides?
- abainbridge 9mo agoYep, I think it is. The point is there's almost no history of oral peptides, other than stomachs destroying them. FTA: "So to summarize the state of the art in oral peptide delivery: there are exactly two FDA-approved products that use permeation enhancers to get peptides into your bloodstream through your GI tract. Both achieve sub-1% bioavailability. Both required over a decade of development, thousands of clinical trial participants, and hundreds of millions of dollars."
- pstuart 9mo agoWould a sublingual dose be possible/more effective? Research in other (um, yeah, medicinal!) compounds shows that it can be an effective pathway to the bloodstream rather than trying to survive the digestive system.
- rodarmor 9mo agoIt would be hilarious if people wound up snorting or boofing their GLP-1s (≧▽≦)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pstuart 9mo agoInsufflation for medicinal purposes if it works and doesn't cause harm seem like a win. Less needles == more use.
- LoganDark 9mo agoAncedotal but it's really hard for me to do insufflation because of the discomfort. Of course if my life depended on it I could probably do it but otherwise I'd rather not.
- ftchd 9mo ago[flagged]
- badc0ffee 9mo agoInformative article but I feel like it could have benefited from a paragraph about what Hims is. I had never heard of them before.
- maxbond 9mo agoAn online pharmacy that advertises pretty aggressively, with men being the target audience. Hair loss, erectile dysfunction, that sort of thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hims_%26_Hers_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hims_%26_Hers_Health
- kotaKat 9mo agoOf note: They all basically run off the backs of 1099’d “contracted” “doctors” (nurse practitioners and other low-to-midlevels that can rubber stamp scripts). Do they actually make a proper assessment? Questionable, they’re going based on the lies you tell them over text and video. Here’s your script for your dick pills, come back soon!
- bonsai_spool 9mo agoI'm not a specialist but I think there are some stapled peptides that do show appreciable uptake, so the blog post is not a complete history; this review reports bioavailability of up to 70% for some agents. Nielsen DS et al. 2017. Orally Absorbed Cyclic Peptides. Chemical Reviews. https://sci-hub.ru/10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00838 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00838
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> this review reports bioavailability of up to 70% for some agents To save us some skimming, could you specify which ones? (The review covers cyclic peptides that are absorbed by all mammals.)
- bonsai_spool 9mo agoThere are several - I’m not sure why you say cyclic peptides are somehow distinct from other peptides regarding their bioavailability? All peptides face similar challenges with absorption; the cyclic peptides simply have less liability to proteolysis. The text covers dozens of agents with varied biochemical properties.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> I’m not sure why you say cyclic peptides are somehow distinct from other peptides regarding their bioavailability? I'm saying there are peptides on that list that are bioavailable to non-human mammals.
- parthsuthar 9mo agowait till you discover soviet bioregulators (peptides by dr khavinson). all designed for oral.