Two women have been put on ventilators after receiving peptide shots at a medical convention focused on how to cheat death.
The women, a 38-year-old from California and a 51-year-old from Nevada, who have not been named, were raced to hospital after taking the experimental injections at a booth at the conference in Las Vegas.
Organizers of the Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival, otherwise known as RAADfest, say they are investigating the hospitalizations.
The doctor who ran the booth where the women took the shots, Dr. Kent Holtorf, promotes himself as a specialist in ‘age reversal’, but did not have permission to practice medicine in Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Holtorf told ProPublica that he rejects allegations that the peptide injections he gave the women caused them to suddenly fall ill, with the attendees reportedly suffering swelling tongues, accelerated heart rates and breathing problems.
‘Of course, I want to get to the bottom of it. But almost assuredly it will come out that it was not the peptides,’ he told the outlet.
The episode comes as peptides have come under scrutiny following the political rise of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, an avowed supporter of the therapy as a solution to chronic disease.
Two women have been put on ventilators after receiving peptide shots at the the Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival, otherwise known as RAADfest, in Las Vegas, a medical convention focused on how to cheat death
The doctor who ran the booth where the women took the shots, Kent Holtorf (pictured), promotes himself as a specialist in ‘age reversal’, but did not have permission to practice medicine in Nevada, according to reports
Holtorf said that he became convinced that the hospitalizations were not caused by peptides after plugging information about the incident into an AI app.
He reportedly said that the AI gave him a 57-page report that ‘basically says that it is impossible it was the peptides’, but he added: ‘I don’t want to try and push the blame and say it wasn’t us… We are reassessing everything we are doing.’
While admitting he is not licensed to practice medicine in Nevada, Holtorf said that he hired a practitioner to write prescriptions and administer therapies for him at the booth where the women were injected.
‘I knew what was going on but was not hands on,’ he said.
The RAADfest summit where the incident unfolded is focused on avoiding death and limiting aging, a concept popularized by figures such as Kennedy and ‘biohacker’ Brian Johnson.
Images on social media from the event this year show speakers on stage and at booths with a grim reaper, including at one booth lauding the ‘death of death.’
The episode comes as peptides have come under scrutiny following the political rise of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, an avowed supporter of the therapy as a solution to chronic disease
The RAADfest summit where the incident unfolded is focused on avoiding death and limiting aging, a concept popularized by figures such as ‘biohacker’ Brian Johnson (pictured)
Images on social media from the event this year show speakers on stage and at booths with a grim reaper, including at one booth lauding the ‘death of death’
According to a police report from the Review Journal, Holtorf ran a booth at the conference offering peptide shots despite only being licensed to practice medicine in California, and not Nevada.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police reportedly said that as many as seven people fell ill at the event, prompting investigations from the Southern Nevada Health District and the Nevada Board of Pharmacy.
The two women who were taken ill were reportedly rushed by ambulance to the hospital, with one intubated by the time she reached the hospital.
The other woman suffered side effects including loss of muscle control in her neck, inability to open her eyes and losing the ability to communicate with doctors, the police report said.
Peptides are often used in modern medicine for a variety of health conditions, but combining them together can increase risks and are often not approved by medical bodies.
The report noted that the women received different peptide combinations, both including at least one compound that poses significant risks when combined with others, according to the FDA.
James Strole, the organizer of RAADfest, said that the two women spent several days in the hospital and are now recovering, and insisted that while it is ‘not clear the people got sick as a result of treatment from Dr. Holtorf’, he was ‘anxious’ for the incident to be ‘deeply investigated’
Holtorf insisted that he was ‘freaked out’ by the reactions because the symptoms didn’t make ‘any sense’, and said he had not seen such reactions in 30 years.
He added that it is hard to keep up with which peptide combinations are accepted and which are banned, saying there is ‘so much gray area… people know they just get patients better.’
James Strole, the organizer of RAADfest, told ProPublica that the two women spent several days in the hospital and are now recovering.
He maintained that it is ‘not clear the people got sick as a result of treatment from Dr. Holtorf’, but was ‘anxious’ for the incident to be ‘deeply investigated.’
He added that RAADfest has not had anything similar occur in 10 years of running the conference, but this is the first year that Holtorf offered therapies.
Despite the hospitalizations at his event, Strole insisted that peptides are considered ‘generally safe’ and he takes them himself regularly, but for everyone at his events, ‘the big concern is safety.’
‘We look at who is doing the administering, whether it’s an injection or supplement. We look at the person and the company itself, what the efficacy is, how they operate, their safety measures. We look at all that,’ he said.
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