Yahoo Finance Executive EditorBrian Sozzi chats with Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar about the alarming rise of untested, black-market peptides being pushed by influencers online.
I’m sure you’re watching the the peptides debate uh in the United States and I, look, I know folks in my universe that have to take these. Um,
at what point did it become mainstream? I I still feel as though there’s like a, you know, a black market for these things. There’s no other way to put it. Like I can’t go to like let’s say Amazon per se and buy safe peptides.
And thank God for that by the way.
Yes, yes. I’m not saying yeah, I’m yeah, yes, exactly. That’s correct. Yeah.
No, but um but but let me let me tell you so, it’s quite funny. You you talked about my tenure at Novo 34 years and so on. For pretty much, you know, um all of that starting from when I was photocopying, um I would tell people we are the biggest peptide company in the world back then and then people had no clue what peptide is. So, so Novo is one of the first peptide companies in the world because insulin, which we created um and um and and and started selling, we didn’t create the insulin, but we started selling it 103 years ago, was one of the first peptides.
Today, we are the only company in the world that has a peptide in a pill, by the way. So, so Wegovy pill is the only peptide in a pill. also why it’s powerful. Coming back to it, all the other pills, they’re small molecule, they’re chemically induced and that’s also why that they are not, you know, at this point reaching the the potency of Wegovy pill. But, um,
there are so many of these peptides out there that unlike Wegovy pill, unlike our insulins are not tested. They have not gone through clinical trials. At best, maybe there are some animal studies and people have seen how they have behaved in a rat or a mouse, but not a human.
It’s really good that our industry is regulated. Because medicines can have severe side effects. Medicine, you know, can kill if misused.
So, this is not like going and buying a fake Gucci bag.
Right.
It has serious consequences.
From what you see out there, is this stuff are these is this safe?
They have not been tested. So, so the the answer from from my side is, I have no clue and for sure I don’t want to take the risk on myself. Maybe they have benefits, maybe they have risks, maybe they don’t, but why would you take such a big gamble and bet with your body, with your health?
Um, I see, of course, a lot of people are influenced by influencers and others. I want the people to think a little bit more, not just about the benefits of them, which the influencers often talk about, talk about, but also the risks and outweigh the risks versus the benefits. I would not think for me, this is worth it. Now, will I think that sometimes in the future, some of these, you know, molecules and some of these peptides should be tested properly by um,
