Martin Shkreli, former pharmaceutical industry executive, has called Silicon Valley's peptide obsession a "delusion," referring to the category as lacking basic science. He argues that without a known target, a binding mechanism, and real clinical data, the peptide product is not truly developed. Peptides like BPC-157 and thymosin alpha-1 are manufactured in Chinese labs and sold online as “research chemicals’ and injected by Silicon Valley founders and biohackers for various purposes. Shhreli argues that most of these peptides have never been through a proper human trial and that many can't be patented so pharma has no commercial incentive to fund the approval pathway.