Thomas’s phone alarm buzzes at 9:30 pm — it’s time for the aspiring bodybuilder to start injecting himself in the stomach with several banned peptides.
Numerous nations have reported people being hospitalised after using peptides. In June, Australia’s government reported six cases of acute liver injury linked to products labelled Retatrutide.
However neuroscientist Armelle Rancillac at French research institute INSERM warned that knowledge on how to use these peptides remains limited because they “have often not been tested on humans”. Earlier this year, INSERM said that “no large-scale, randomised controlled clinical trial has confirmed” the promised benefits of peptides, warning that some pose “very real health risks”. “We are not giving research enough time to prove its worth,” Rancillac emphasised, adding that” scientifically worthless” accounts of self-experimentation were being given too much credence.
