As athletes gather in Las Vegas this weekend for the inaugural “steroid Olympics” backed by Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr, drugmakers are scrambling to promote a new generation of performance-enhancing drugs for everything from health to vanity.
Featuring 42 global athletes competing in swimming, track and weightlifting, the Enhanced Games were conceived by Enhanced Group, a start-up backed by a host of Maga conservatives such as Trump Jr’s venture capital firm 1789. Enhanced has marketed itself as an entertainment company like World Wrestling Entertainment, but it is also in the drug distribution business hoping to compete against telehealth company Hims.
With its pro-Maga twist, Enhanced has jumped into a competition with hundreds of start-up health businesses racing to sell peptides, which are unregulated and untested for their purported benefits. The company’s co-founder, Christian Angermayer, said Enhanced is using the Las Vegas competitions for a clinical trial to secure intellectual property rights for peptides, which have not been patented by major pharmaceutical firms.