Two women who attended an event in Las Vegas called "Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival" — please bask in the red flags that have already appeared in this sentence — received peptide injections at a booth organized by an unlicensed physician specializing in "age reversal" therapies.
As ProPublica reports, not long after receiving the shots at a conference booth, they both fell ill and had to be wheeled off in ambulances. They were hospitalized and left in critical condition, highlighting the severe dangers of unlicensed therapies.
Their tongues reportedly started swelling up, and one had to be intubated. The other woman lost control of the muscles in her neck and couldn't open her eyes, per a police report.
Public health investigators are now looking to determine if anybody else at the festival experienced a similar fate. Local law enforcement determined that up to seven people at the conference had been hospitalized as well.
The news comes as noted anti-vaxxer and Health and Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has promoted the amino acid chains known as peptides as a way to stave off aging. Last year, Kennedy vowed to end the Food and Drug Administration's purported "war on public health," accusing it of "aggressive suppression" of various potentially dangerous substances, including peptides.
Kent Holtorf, the doctor overseeing the booth, has similarly called for looser regulations for alternative therapies, ProPublica reports. He had to hire a practitioner to carry out one of the injections, since he's not licensed in Nevada. A second contracted practitioner, who administered the injection to the second woman, also didn't have the necessary Nevada licenses.
Holtorf — whose practice was chastized by the Federal Trade Commission for claiming that its peptide therapies could prevent COVID-19 — told ProPublic that he doesn't think "it was the peptides, but I don’t want to try and push the blame and say it wasn’t us."
Investigators have yet to determine the exact cause of the illness or whether it was indeed related to the injections. Holtorf told ProPublica that he's not sure where the peptides that were used in his booth came from.
Peptides are already approved in dozens of medications for the treatment of various health problems, including cancer and diabetes. However, its use for age reversal or regenerative health by compounding it into new formulations remains unreviewed by the FDA. At least 18 of the most popular compounding components of popular peptide treatments have been deemed to have "significant safety risks" by the agency.
At least one component in one of the peptide concoctions one of the two women received is on that list.
The so-called "Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival" in Las Vegas is part of a much broader network of for-profit entities claiming to have discovered the fountain of youth, helping people achieve "immortality."
But given the latest news, these unorthodox approaches, especially when deemed as unsafe by regulators, come with plenty of risk. Considering the current political climate — and the fact that an anti-vaxxer who champions the use of potentially dangerous alternative medicines is in charge of the HHS — it's unlikely to be the last time we hear of such incidents.
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