Transskript:
"LUSE: Over the past few years, Silicon Valley has become more than just the birthplace of groundbreaking technology. It's also a hub of biohacking. According to WebMD, biohacking is making changes to your body or lifestyle to improve something about yourself, like your health, brain power or athletic ability. So eat a balanced diet. Get sleep. Move your body. Simple, right? But biohacking is also notorious for bizarre hacks at best and medical misinformation at worst. Think tech giant Bryan Johnson using his own son's blood to crack the fountain of youth.
But that hasn't stopped people from pushing the limits of the human body. In fact, what if I told you the rise of prescription injectables like Ozempic may have some biohackers turning to the unregulated injectable market? And to help me out, we've got Jasmine Sun, an independent journalist who writes a Substack newsletter about Silicon Valley culture...
SUN: Thanks for having us on.
LUSE: ...And Karen Maschke, editor in chief of Ethics & Human Research, a journal from the Hastings Center for Bioethics, an independent research center.
KAREN MASCHKE: Thank you very much.
LUSE: I actually want to start with you, Jasmine. Can you set the scene for us? Like, what is the new trend making its way through Silicon Valley, and what is it hoping to hack?
SUN: Right. So I recently wrote a piece for The New York Times on the rise of, quote-unquote, "Chinese peptides" in Silicon Valley, which is a biohacking trend that's exploded throughout 2025. I think I first saw it as a meme and people talking about it on Twitter, on X. And then I mentioned it in real life and started meeting real-life people in San Francisco who said, oh, yeah, I am buying off-label injectables from Chinese manufacturers off the internet, mixing them myself with vials of bacteriostatic water in my home and injecting them into my body. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I had no idea this is something that people are actually doing.
And so what's happened is that, first, I think it did start with the explosion of GLP-1s, of Ozempic, where folks became interested in these weight loss drugs, started looking for cheaper ways to get them - for example, through these off-market suppliers who are selling semaglutide as research chemicals rather than for human use purposes.
LUSE: And I want to note here that the P in GLP-1 - that stands for peptide.
SUN: Right. And once people started realizing you could get cheap peptides - Ozempic is a type of peptide - from the research chemical market, biohackers started exploring what other sorts of magic pills might there be out there. If we can do one shot for weight loss, maybe we can do another shot for sleep, another shot for happiness, another shot for getting smarter and more productive. And so people have started experimenting with all sorts of injectable peptides. Again, the vast majority of them having no human clinical trial evidence with the exception of the GLP-1s.
LUSE: I - when I first came across your story, I was, like, scanning, scraping the inside of my brain, trying to remember the last science class I took in 2004. For those of us who don't know or simply may not remember, what are peptides?
SUN: Yeah. So peptides are a pretty broad class of chemical. It's basically a short chain of amino acids. So think, like, a mini baby protein. A lot of peptides occur naturally in the body, so oxytocin or insulin is a type of peptide. Of course, that's one that we do have lots of evidence for. But I think because it is such a broad category, people have been extrapolating from the success of proven peptides like insulin or ones like semaglutide, GLP-1s, to all sorts of these other amino acids where we haven't really studied the effects. We're not exactly sure how they work. But folks are trying all sorts of things.
LUSE: OK. So, Karen, as a bioethicist, can you break down what makes biohacking so compelling to people, like, especially in the tech space?
MASCHKE: I think there's been a long-standing issue for 50 years or more in this country about people thinking that regulations are too strict, that when they want to do something to their body, they should be able to do it. And some of that came out of the patient advocacy movement back in the 1940s through the 1960s, and it's still prevalent today in the patient advocacy movement that science moves too slow. We have unmet needs, meaning we don't have the right kinds of drugs to cure people or make them better, and that there's an urgency to people who are really, really sick.
And so that kind of thinking has been translated into a lot of these other populations (laughter) who are not necessarily sick but want to be able to do something to enhance their body. And enhancement can take all kinds of forms. You can take it through peptides. You can enhance your body by doing personalized gene editing, which has been done by biohackers. And so it's a thought process and a certain kind of approach to helping myself and not wanting regulators and doctors to get in the way.
LUSE: Karen, when you bring up this idea that, like, regulations take too long or, you know, it's too difficult to be able to have access to the things that you feel that you might need or people might feel that they need to be able to, like, change their body or their life in the way that they want to, it makes me think of something that one of your sources, Jasmine, said in your article. They said that these peptides - or there was a certain peptide that they were discussing. I believe it was oxytocin. And they described it as like Ozempic for autism. What does it say about both this specific culture that you're looking into in Silicon Valley, but also our American sort of culture and our attitudes about bodies and health more broadly, that Ozempic is being used as a kind of shorthand term for, like...
SUN: Totally.
LUSE: A very simple, quick fix.
SUN: Yeah. I think that was a fascinating turn of phrase. It caught my eye, too.
LUSE: Yeah.
SUN: So I think that when people see a technology, whether it's a, you know, a pharmaceutical like Ozempic or whether it's even, you know, something, like, you can just DoorDash food to your door instead of going out and getting it. That is very, very appealing. I think a lot of folks, especially very busy people, whether because they are a, you know, a mom juggling a bunch of kids or some tech founder with, like, a really intense job. They're always sort this mode of trying to figure out, how can I save more time? How can I achieve these aspirational lifestyles, like, to look a certain way or to feel a certain way, without as much time, as much cost, whatever.
LUSE: Yeah.
SUN: And so I think the interest in if Ozempic feels like this magical weight loss drug, you can instantly, you know, lose 50 pounds or whatever, people are very interested in, oh, what if oxytocin could help me instantly feel connection with other people and make friends, even though it's hard to make friends? Or what if this other drug will help me get tanner, so I don't have to go in the sun? I can just take Melanotan and inject it, and then I'm going to get a suntan automatically.
LUSE: I can't lie. I would be laughing very heartily the day that that really goes wrong for a person (laughter) who doesn't want to live that life. But, I mean, aside from that, which is, like, you know, a very specific circumstance that I personally find hilarious. Karen, what are some of the concerns, like, the real concerns, with biohacking?
MASCHKE: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the sale and marketing of medical products, was created specifically because of the kinds of things that are happening now. In the 1800s and the first part of the 20th century, people were selling potions, sometimes they were called elixirs, and they were sold just exactly as Jasmine described them, as the magic pill. And they were sold by women who were putting together potions in their kitchen. They were sold by men who were creating these small little start-up entrepreneurial companies, and people died. That was a key issue. And some children died, in fact, in this historical, you know, moment. And so the U.S. Congress decided, you know, we need to have some regulation about what is sold to people. It was often referred to as snake oil. And at that time, in the mid-20th century, there was also the scientific movement. The scientific system itself was becoming very sophisticated in terms of how we study what works in humans and what doesn't.
LUSE: Yeah.
MASCHKE: Randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials started to emerge in the 1950s. It is now considered for a long time the gold standard of the kind of evidence you need for someone to say, I have a product that works this way with this safety and efficacy profile, and I want to sell it to the U.S. public. And the Food and Drug Administration was created to be that buffer, you know, to get things out that have been shown through a scientific process to be relatively safe and effective.
And so I'm concerned in terms of the work I do and in bioethics, there is an ethical issue about the use of products that don't have good evidence because they have a harm factor, and if I'm selling them or promoting to - them to other people, that raises questions about the issue of harm and benefit. And if things aren't benefiting people, but they're harming them, then we have, you know, societal issues. And especially, we don't know if children are getting these, adolescents, if they're going on the black market. What is the social responsibility that they have? Do they have a social responsibility to be careful how they promote these products?
LUSE: It's interesting. I don't know, I can understand why a young person would be invested in a rave review of a Chinese peptide or something like that. But what is it about, like, adults that are making them susceptible to this? What is driving people to reconsider what they think is safe?
MASCHKE: Yeah. I think Jasmine raised some of that in terms of the culture indirectly. I mean, there's a lot of pressure in various work populations to be successful. And in that culture in Silicon Valley, it often means working long hours, devoting yourself to a certain company if you're working for a company or if you're starting up a company. And so there's immense pressure to look a certain way, to act a certain way. Jasmine raised it in terms of the social interaction factor. And I think that that, you know, pressure is - you know, it's internalized. And as a woman, I can say, growing up in a culture...
LUSE: Oh, sure.
MASCHKE: ...In the 20th century...
LUSE: Yeah.
MASCHKE: ...Of what that meant, internalizing how you should look and talk and approach people, it's a cultural phenomenon that I think people are seeking ways to meet these standards.
SUN: Yeah. I think what Karen said is definitely one of the big factors. There's another trend this summer in Silicon Valley, the 996 trend.
LUSE: Please. Yes, talk about this. Please talk about this.
SUN: It is a new work culture trend of working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week, borrowed from the Chinese tech culture of the 2010s, but which was so extreme that even the Chinese government made it illegal for companies to mandate 996. But a lot of Silicon Valley startups have started embracing the hustle of the 996 culture. So one is just like we are in a period where hustle culture is back in. People are celebrating these long hours. And as one of my sources said, why be consistent at the gym when I could work 16 hours straight at my research job? I think another factor, too, is - has to do with the way that Silicon Valley thinks about the establishment, thinks about institutions and thinks about themselves.
So I think a lot of folks who are in the tech community really pride themselves on feeling like they are on the frontier, like, they can figure things out themselves. And so this sort of, quote-unquote, "do your own research" mode of approaching medicine is really appealing. The idea is like, oh, you know, the FDA is so slow, it takes, like, 10 years to do all these studies. They're really risk-averse because they're really worried about the downsides. But these folks might think, well, I'm a pretty smart person. I have a computer science degree. I'm good at using ChatGPT to do research. I've built a company from scratch and in a field where no one told me I could do it before. So, like, why couldn't I also take my health into my own hands?
And so I think also the very risk tolerant culture, the very, I'm a frontiersman. Like, I can figure out stuff before the institutions can culture also makes people a lot more comfortable with exploring, you know, these unregulated drugs. I think several founders who I spoke to who are using these peptides literally compare their risk tolerance around health to their risk tolerance around their companies. They said, you know, I know there are downsides. I know it could go wrong, but I'm somebody who is willing to take the risk because sometimes the upside is worth it.
LUSE: Coming up...
SUN: They see technology not just as a way to make their human lives more efficient but actually as a way to transcend the limitations of the human body to sort of merge with the machine and become more than our, you know, fleshy selves.
LUSE: More with Jasmine and Karen after the break.
LUSE: One of the things I've been thinking about, though - biohacking is a term I've heard for a long time. And the trends have changed, you know, from, like, you know, eating a lot of protein and maybe getting really into Brazilian jujitsu or applying the lessons of "The 4-Hour Body," which is a book written by Tim Ferriss, I believe, in 2010 that was all about, like, using, you know, basically, like, almost, like, the minimum effort to get, like, maximum result. But that to me felt like it was very much about efficiency. I wonder, though, what do you think is undergirding these trends now? Like, what's the desire from Silicon Valley right now?
SUN: I think this might be an opportunity to think about - for some of the more radical peptide users, which, to be clear, is not all of them. Plenty of people are just looking for the efficiency or the weight loss benefits or whatever. But there are some folks, like one of the women I interviewed, who are more on the, quote-unquote, "transhumanist" side of things where they see technology not just as a way to make their human lives more efficient, but actually as a way to transcend the limitations of the human body to sort of merge with the machine and become more than our, you know, fleshy selves. So this woman, Brooke Bowman, I interviewed, she told me she actually had an RFID chip - microchip - implanted in her hand at a human augmentation dance party...
LUSE: Yes.
SUN: ...So that theoretically, when someone moved their phone near her hand, they could scan her Telegram profile and then message her. Unfortunately, the dance party chip was implanted too deep, so it does not work.
LUSE: As - I mean, as I imagine, a chip you get implanted in your body at a dance party, I could see that going left. But yeah, go ahead.
SUN: I know. You know, people used to get flash tattoos. Now they do this. But I do think that that shows the sort of more radical side of this Silicon Valley biohacking thinking where it crosses over to not just, let me use this technology as a tool, but I am going to merge with a machine. And together, we are going to become more than human, right? And so I think especially with AI also taking over, you know, Silicon Valley and the world, people are sort of thinking, maybe it is possible to build technologies that are smarter than we are, that are more powerful than we are. And I think that has increased interest in these biohacking trends as well.
LUSE: Well, it makes me think about something else that I've seen in the ether recently. The Cut recently put out an article around friction-maxxing. This is an essay written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton, who's been on the show before a couple of times. She's phenomenal. But she described friction-maxxing - her term. It's kind of like foregoing the convenience of tech to actually engage with life. Like, for example, like, not using ChatGPT to make your grocery list or not sharing your location with your family or requiring that your family share their location with you so that you actually have to go, hey, where are you, which invites friction, right? I wonder, is there an argument to be made that some of these trends are foregoing or are selling the promise that we can forego the expected challenges of human life? Karen, what do you think?
MASCHKE: I agree. The whole issue - I was thinking as Jasmine was talking. In bioethics and ethical circles, there's been long discussions about transhumanism and the concept of what it means to be a human. And what it means to be a human means, you know, things get messy. I mean, we live on a planet in a universe that we don't really know much about, even after thousands of years of exploration. And we try to do the best we can. And we still don't know about how the human body works after thousands of years of studying the human body. And we've got scientists who've won Nobel Prizes for all kinds of things, and yet we still haven't, quote, "cured" cancer.
LUSE: I mean, we haven't even cured the common cold.
MASCHKE: Absolutely right. We have things that make it feel better. But I think this is a real important issue about a culture that doesn't want to be messy, doesn't want to wait for scientists to do the right kind of studies, wants to take shortcuts. And I think shortcuts are good sometimes. I take shortcuts all the time. We all do in our lives. But not wanting to engage with people in a way that can be uncomfortable or that can force us to actually look people in the eye and maybe touch people and touch things - that idea might be onto something about what it means to have a life of friction. It's not always pleasant, but sometimes it has meaningful consequences in the long term.
LUSE: Jasmine, what do you think about this?
SUN: Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely of - in somewhat of two minds about it because I don't want to romanticize friction for its own sake. Like, I - you know, I'm nearsighted. I have contact lenses. I'm imagining a world before my contact lenses when I couldn't see anything and people might just say, you know, the friction of having to get really close to that sign to see it, you know?
SUN: So I am very grateful for many of the medical technologies that have improved my life. But I do think that there is a question of what are you trading off? Like, we can talk about Ozempic, right? Like, if you think that Ozempic is a substitute for, say, having a movement practice in your life, a substitute for going on runs with your friends or joining a sports team or something, like, what are you trading off there, right? Because it's not actually a one-to-one substitute. And when you give up the friction of, say, joining a sports team, you're also giving up the social benefits. You're giving up maybe some vitamin D, the muscle growth, the, you know, mobility exercises that you're doing. So I think sometimes when people are choosing technological shortcuts to reduce friction, they're also missing out on a lot of the benefits that the more frictionful activity might give them. And so I think that's the question I'd prompt people to think about. It's not just, like - you know, it's - sometimes you do want to take the shortcut, like Karen said. But what are you actually giving up when you do that?
LUSE: That's such an interesting way to think about that. Oh, my gosh. I am so happy to start the year off with this conversation. Thank you both so, so much. I really learned a lot today.
SUN: Thanks so much for having us.
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