“People are desperate and bombarded with misinformation and may not have the skills, time or context to interpret medical evidence.”
The Cherry Avenue Auction in Fresno, Calif., May 22, 2021.
“It’s disappointing but not surprising” that people living below the poverty line have spent large sums of money for unproven treatments for COVID-19, said Rais Vohra, the interim head of Fresno County’s health department. She was not prepared, she said, for the $1,400 bill, which included the cost of syringes and vials labeled thymosin-alpha 1, BPC-157 and LL-37. Pulling them out of a cabinet in the kitchen of her mobile home, she said she did not know exactly what they were, and she still feels the sting of the price.
Some unregulated drugs can be dangerous. And even if they are not a health risk by themselves, they can lead people to postpone seeking help from doctors, which can be deadly. Delayed treatment is one reason Black and Hispanic people have died from COVID at twice the rate as white people in the United States.
Dr. Ignacio Guzman, who specializes in “anti-aging, regenerative and integrative medicine” at a clinic in an affluent area of northern Fresno, uses social media to advertise peptide therapy for a broad range of ailments. On Instagram, he promoted it in a photograph of himself getting a COVID-19 vaccine, writing that “integrating peptides with immunizations can double their efficacy!”