I think my favourite quote from this show is Allison when she talks about asking the young woman "so what was it for you that made it all right to become an injecting drug users to get a tan".

So, some of the stuff mentioned in the show:

Martin Chandler from John Moores University in Liverpool has been looking at Melanotan 2 use in some detail. In 2008 he gave this presentation to the National Conference on Injecting Drug Use (NCIDU)

We mentioned the ACMDs recent Hepatitis report as a reason NSPs need to keep supplying clean works to PIED users.

And finally as promised, the classic advert for Tango



Let us know what you thought of the show

Update: just been sent this link by Tim from the Irish Needle Exchange Forum (INEF).

Is Melanotan safe to use.

The blog its on is called 'Evidence based only' and looks well worth bookmarking.

Greetings Allison Downing and Nigel Brunsdon,
This podcast while being quite informative and expressing valid concerns has some significant errors in it. 1. The Australian company is not developing melanotan II but rather melanotan-1 (under the generic name "afamelanotide"). They have developed melanotan-1 into a single controlled release bioresorbable subcutaneous implant which is far removed from the daily injection method of administration found in unlicensed and unregulated usage. They are currently conducting phase I, phase II and phase III human trials of their melanotan-1 ("afamelanotide") implant for a series of UV and light related skin indications. 2. Melanotan-1 ("afamelanotide") unlike melanotan II does not have sexual effects. 3. Melanotan II is not currently in regulated human trials (though this may soon change). 4. There has never been any clinical reports of changes in eye color from peptide usage. There has never been a strong anecdotal report of eye color changes. This thread likely explains what a few people have perceived in terms of what would appear to be a change in eye color.

A constructive criticism, if usage of the peptides is painted in nothing but a negative light there's going to be a bit of a disconnect with audience members who have seen the results of peptide usage. As an informed listener I found the tendency in your report to rely upon solely negative reports out of balance from what an overwhelming number of individuals themselves are reporting. Remember that both negative reports and positive reports are grounded on the same level of credibility (ie: primarily forum posts). So if one dwells on the positive reports (much in the manner you refer to in the podcast relative to those who sell the peptides) or one dwells on the negative reports it is going to be easy to b e skeptical of what is said. The fact that there are a number of errors in your report just bolsters this criticism.

Sincerely,
Scott Stevenson
Melanotan.org - afamelanotide Founder & Admin

Hello Scott,

I've taken the liberty of removing your comment on the hooked entry as it is a copy/paste of this forum post, and I would hate to think that readers of this site would think it may have been inappropriate to have the information repeated in both locations.

On to your comments.

You mentioned you don't think we talked about the positives of the drug, however Allison herself stated that she'd love for it to be approved for use as she suffers from Polymorphic Light Eruption. I also mentioned the fact that it does indeed turn skin darker, commenting that one dealer I know has melanotan injectors becoming incredibly dark skinned.

We also covered two of the other side effects that people report as positive, namely the increased libido and the weight loss. Personally I'm not aware of any other positive effects of the drug that we failed to mention. Please let me know if we missed any.

As far as focusing on the negatives, I'm not sure if you or the other gentleman (Aaron, who posted on the Hooked article) have listened to any of the other episodes of hooked, especially the first episode where we discussed the purpose of the show. I'd suspect from the fact both of you have registered with this site and made the comments you have on the same day we released this episode, and the fact that you run a melanotan forum means you haven't. That's fine though, we welcome new listeners however you get to us. But, the show is harm reduction focused, both Allison and I work in NSPs with illicit drug and PIED users.

Because we are harm reduction workers we obviously focus the podcast, and in my case this site, on reducing risks and harm. As such I think its important to talk about the risks from this drug, after all there are very many sites happy to tell you all the positive good news stories, and plenty of forum based sites that seem to 'loose' the bad news forum posts not long after they are posted. I'm happy to see that your own site does indeed allow people to post about negative side effects of this as yet unapproved product and that your FAQ page goes into great detail on the negative reported effects. In fact I know that in the work Allison has done on Melanotan she has quoted it many times.

Perhaps you'd consider writing something for this website covering the best ways in you're opinion to reduce the possible harms and risks. If you do please bear in mind that a lot of people we see in NSPs are (as mentioned in the show) drug naive young women with no history of injecting who are only being told positives by people selling them the drug. Of course as you have already mentioned Allison and I are not experts on this drug, so if you do decide to write something I would of course first give it to Martin Chandler at JMU for fact checking, but I'm happy to have anything on this site that helps reduce possible harms from injecting.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Nigel Brunsdon wrote:

Because we are harm reduction workers we obviously focus the podcast, and in my case this site, on reducing risks and harm. As such I think its important to talk about the risks from this drug, after all there are very many sites happy to tell you all the positive good news stories, and plenty of forum based sites that seem to 'loose' the bad news forum posts not long after they are posted. I'm happy to see that your own site does indeed allow people to post about negative side effects of this as yet unapproved product and that your FAQ page goes into great detail on the negative reported effects. In fact I know that in the work Allison has done on Melanotan she has quoted it many times.

Nigel,

Thank you for your prompt response and also thank you for the acknowledgment here above. We want to give the full picture and let forum members use such information to have a better chance to make better informed decisions about using these drugs. If you review our posts (the moderators and myself) in the forums you will find that we are sooner discouraging people from using them especially when it becomes evident that they haven't done enough research about them to understand what the risks are with their usage.

Melanotan.org has previously engaged publicly and privately (via e-mail) with Martin Chandler, Jim McVeigh and Michael Evans-Brown of the Liverpool John Moores University substance use team. They appear to have taken on board much of what we've expressed (Jim McVeigh demonstrated as much in his radio interview on Radio Leeds - the same one Allison Downing was involved in- in very clearly making a distinction between what's been developed in Australia and unlicensed usage). We previously publicly expressed a desire to host (or link to) formalized versions of the harm reduction messages that your organizations want to express particularly if they are tailored to the cohorts of users of the melanotan peptides. Unfortunately to my knowledge none of your organizations have published (on the web) any harm reduction guides specific to the melanotan peptides that individuals can be directed to for guidance about the potential pitfalls (and ways of avoiding them) of their usage.

As is prominently expressed throughout the Melanotan.org forums we are keen to discourage casual usage of the peptides and we are keen to inform users of our forums on best practices in terms of administration and methods to best reduce the potentials for harm. This is why we are interested in working with you folks and your organizations based upon the fact that you are more authoritative in such matters than ourselves. Thereby our authorities in each area can work to buttress the others.


To further comment on the content of your podcast, the status of the clinical trials for these peptides was portrayed to be faltering. This portrayal is quite erroneous as well. The status of clinical trials for melanotan-1 "afamelanotide" is explained here and is quite robust (soon they will be conducting trials of the drug in the U.S. after having received FDA IND approval). The sexual dysfunction drug bremelanotide that has been developed from melanotan II research did falter a bit in phase II clinical trials of an intranasally (nasal spray) administered form of the drug due to concerns over a small number of trial participants experiencing elevated blood pressure. The New Jersey company developing it has since conducted a phase I trial in a healthy sized cohort where the drug was administered subcutaneously and they report that none of these previous blood pressure issues were encountered. It is their view that due to a lack of precision in dosing levels via intranasal administration that the small number of trial subjects who had experienced the blood pressure issue were likely subjected to blood plasma levels of the drug that were much too high (unnecessarily high for efficacy). With subcutaneous administration there is much more control over these levels such that only an amount sufficient for efficacy can be administered to thereby avoid excessively high dosages. Obviously it is somewhat false to compare the unlicensed usage of these peptides to fully regulated and licensed trials of them but none-the-less it is also false to portray the drugs in a more doubtful light than corresponds with reality.

Sincerely,
Scott Stevenson
Melanotan.org - afamelanotide Founder & Admin

There's an interesting and highly informative article about melanotan II that you folks would be well advised to read by author Dan Gwartney, MD published in the March 2009 issue of FitnessRX for Men and the April 2009 issue of FitnessRX for Women:

MELANOTAN II: THE NEW UNDERGROUND TANNING DRUG

The article is written from an American point of view and with the latest news regarding bremelanotide's return to clinical trials (subcutaneously) is a bit out of date but it is well written, informative and well cited. It even covers melanotan-1 ("afamelanotide") a bit.

Thanks,

-Scott Stevenson
Melanotan.org - afamelanotide Founder & Admin