Documenting unproven medicine in Canada and beyond
Health Canada will not authorize BPC-157 as an injectable drug, and will not licence it as a natural health product. But a physician can still prescribe it, and a compounding pharmacy can still make it. A CBC News hidden-camera investigation found two Canadian doctors doing exactly that.
Neither physician named on this page has been found guilty of professional misconduct by a medical regulator or any tribunal. Neither has been referred to a discipline hearing. Nothing here asserts that either has broken any law or any professional standard, and both hold registration with their provincial college.
What is documented here is what each doctor was recorded telling a prospective patient, what each clinic advertised, and what the evidence and the regulations actually say. Readers should draw their own conclusions. This page sits in Dubious Rx — the section for unproven treatments and for practitioners who have not been adjudicated — and deliberately not in Bad-MD, which covers doctors with adverse findings against them.
Peptides are short chains of amino acids. Some are ordinary medicine: insulin is a peptide, and so are the GLP-1 drugs such as semaglutide. Those went through the full authorization process, carry a Drug Identification Number, and have human trial data behind them.
Body Protection Compound-157 — BPC-157 — has not. It is a 15-amino-acid sequence derived from a fragment of a protein found in gastric juice, and it has become one of the most heavily promoted compounds in the fitness and longevity market, sold on the promise that it accelerates tissue repair, calms inflammation and speeds recovery from injury.
The animal literature is real and reasonably large. The human literature is close to non-existent — and what there is of it is not encouraging. According to former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, speaking on Face the Nation on 26 July 2026, the only clinical study the agency was able to review was a 30-patient trial in ulcerative colitis, and it found no benefit. That is the state of the human evidence: one small trial, and it failed. Dr. Rachel Pessah-Pollack, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone, put the scale of it on CBS Mornings — BPC-157 has been tested in roughly thirty people, against hundreds of thousands for the GLP-1 drugs.
When the FDA's own staff reviewers examined the compound ahead of a July 2026 advisory meeting, they found the safety and effectiveness evidence thin and flagged the absence of adequate human clinical trials. The FDA had earlier placed BPC-157 in its Category 2 for compounding, citing adverse immune reactions, peptide-related impurities and insufficient safety information.
At the July 2026 meeting, FDA scientists returned repeatedly to something more basic than the missing trials: it is not chemically clear what these peptides even are. There is no universally accepted chemical formula for each one, which makes the substances extremely difficult to evaluate at all.
That is worth sitting with. Before you can ask whether a compound works, you have to be able to say what is in the bottle. On BPC-157, the regulator with the most resources in the world says it cannot reliably answer that question — while Canadian patients are being handed a prescription for it.
Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University who has written on the peptide boom, has made the central point plainly: plausible biology and rodent healing data generate hypotheses, not evidence that a product helps human patients. His summary of the market — hype outrunning the evidence — is the whole problem in five words.
Health Canada's position on unauthorized peptides is not ambiguous, and it is not new.
On 9 April 2026 the department issued a public advisory telling Canadians not to buy or use unauthorized injectable peptide drugs marketed for anti-aging, bodybuilding or wellness. The advisory listed products seized by Health Canada, among them BPC-157, CJC-1295, DSIP, epitalon, GHK-Cu, ipamorelin, KPV, melanotan I and II, MOTS-c, NAD+, SS-31, TB-500 and retatrutide. It reminded readers that injectable peptides are regulated as prescription drugs in Canada, that authorized drugs carry an eight-digit DIN on the label, and that a "For Research Use Only" label does not make a product legal for human use.
The advisory was not hedged about consequences either. Health Canada set out the harms it associates with these products: hormonal imbalance, mood swings, blood sugar imbalance, liver or kidney damage, blood clots, and the growth of cancerous tumours. That is the same federal department whose compounding policy permits one of the listed compounds to be prescribed.
Asked about BPC-157 specifically, Health Canada told CBC that the compound has not been authorized, that its safety, efficacy and quality have not been assessed, and that scientific evidence supporting its use is limited, with human safety and efficacy data lacking.
The department has also been enforcing. Public advisories on the recalls database record seizures of unauthorized injectable peptides from Canada Peptide (a list running to roughly forty compounds), from Quad Inc. of Beloeil, Quebec, trading as Quadragen and Advanced Research, and — significantly — from the Optimum Wellness Centre in Calgary, a clinic rather than an online vendor, where patients were advised to consult a health professional if they had been administered an unauthorized injectable there.
Five days after the CBC investigation ran, Health Canada announced the end of a case that had been building for years — and it is the single best illustration of both the department's reach and its limits.
On 11 June 2026 the Superior Court of Québec granted Health Canada a permanent injunction against Canlab Research, a Quebec-based online retailer, and its representatives. The department announced it on 29 July 2026; the Canadian Press carried the story the same day.
The escalation ladder is worth laying out, because it shows the department is neither slow nor timid when the target is a seller:
Advisory, ministerial order, temporary injunction, permanent injunction, court supervision, contempt exposure. Health Canada pursued a website through the Superior Court of Québec for roughly two and a half years and obtained an order that reaches into the company's social media accounts.
Every one of these actions — Canada Peptide, Quad Inc., the Optimum Wellness Centre in Calgary, and now Canlab Research under a permanent court injunction — runs against a seller. Not one runs against a prescriber.
Set the two side by side. An online retailer selling BPC-157 gets a ministerial order, two injunctions and the threat of contempt proceedings. A licensed physician can prescribe the same compound, have a pharmacy compound it, and face nothing at all — because at that point the product is no longer being sold, it is being practised, and practice belongs to the provincial colleges.
This is not an oversight or a failure of will. It is the boundary of what the Food and Drugs Act gives the department jurisdiction over. It is also exactly where this story lives: the vigour of the enforcement against Canlab is the measure of how completely the prescribing route escapes it.
Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being precise about it because the whole controversy turns on the detail.
The same regulator that will not let the compound be sold to you will let it be prescribed to you. Timothy Caulfield, professor in the faculty of law and the school of public health at the University of Alberta and research director of its Health Law Institute, called that maddening, and said doctors ought to be warning patients about these products rather than supplying them. Physicians who prescribe them, he told CBC, are leveraging a longevity and wellness trend in the absence of evidence and in the presence of real potential for harm.
Phillips put the regulatory side of it more bluntly: nobody is minding the store. Health Canada will not approve the compound as a drug, and it slips through on the compounded side where the federal safety check effectively does not happen. The practitioner-patient relationship is supposed to be the place where evidence gets converted into advice — but there is no evidence here to convert.
CBC News journalists carrying hidden cameras visited two doctors at clinics that advertised unauthorized peptides — one in Ontario, one in British Columbia — to hear what a prospective patient would be told. The story, by Idil Mussa and Brenda Witmer, was published 24 July 2026 and ran on The National.
Dr. Shawn Seit is the founder and medical director of Rejuuv Medi Spa, a cosmetic and "regenerative" chain with locations in Markham, North York and Yorkville. He is a University of Toronto medical graduate who has spent roughly two decades in aesthetic medicine, and his clinic's marketing leans heavily on award listings, technology firsts and ambassador partnerships with device and filler manufacturers.
Speaking to an undercover CBC journalist at the Markham clinic, Seit offered his own use of the products as the reassurance: I'm on some peptides myself
, he said — that, he added, was how safe he considered them. In a recorded one-on-one consultation he told the journalist that BPC-157 is a real help for healing and inflammation.
In emailed statements to CBC, Seit said his aim is always directed at optimizing his patients' care and treatment, and that he is permitted to compound BPC-157.
Dr. Charles Jiang is the founder and medical director of the Richmond Anti-Aging Clinic, and of related clinics including SkinArt MD and MMC Wellness. He is registered with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, has been a clinical instructor at UBC's medical school since 2016, was named a "doctor making a difference" by Doctors of BC in 2018, and heads the Canadian Chinese Medical Association. His clinics market hormone optimization, IV infusions, functional medicine and peptide therapy, and his own site foregrounds his CPSBC registration as an assurance of clinical rigour.
Until shortly before the CBC story ran, the Richmond Anti-Aging Clinic website claimed BPC-157 could be used for musculoskeletal and gut lining repair. Jiang told a CBC journalist during an in-person visit that unlike peptides bought online, the ones he prescribes are safe: when you order online, he said, you never know the truth behind the product — whereas at his clinic, they are professional doctors. He did not respond to CBC's repeated requests for comment.
The distinction Jiang draws is not fabricated. A prescription filled by a licensed Canadian compounding pharmacy really does differ from a vial of grey-market powder in sterility, dosing accuracy and supply chain — and the "third-party" certificates of analysis that online vendors publish are frequently produced by the vendors themselves.
But purity is not efficacy. A clean, correctly dosed preparation of a compound with no human trial evidence behind it is a clean, correctly dosed preparation of a compound with no human trial evidence behind it. Health Canada has not assessed BPC-157 for safety, quality or effectiveness no matter who compounds it or how carefully. The sourcing argument answers a question nobody's health depends on, and leaves the one that matters untouched.
Two things followed the CBC investigation, and both are on the record.
First, after CBC asked Health Canada about the websites advertising BPC-157, the department said it was investigating whether those activities complied with the Food and Drugs Act. CBC's own broadcast summary described the findings as having sparked a series of new Health Canada investigations.
Second, the material came down. The reference to peptide therapy and BPC-157 was removed from Seit's website, and the BPC-157 claim was removed from the Richmond Anti-Aging Clinic site. That is worth stating plainly and fairly: both clinics stopped advertising the compound. It is also worth noting what removing a web page does and does not do. It ends the advertising. It says nothing about whether prescriptions are still being written.
| The claim | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| BPC-157 helps with healing and inflammation | Substantial animal data across three decades; no adequate blinded, placebo-controlled human trials. FDA staff reviewers found the safety and effectiveness evidence insufficient in 2026. | Unestablished in humans |
| "I'm on some peptides myself" — so they must be safe | A prescriber's personal use is an anecdote, not safety data. It is also the oldest sales technique in unproven medicine, and it transfers risk to the patient while sounding like it shares it. | Not evidence |
| Ours are safe; the ones sold online are not | Half true. Pharmacy compounding does beat grey-market powder on sterility and dosing. It does nothing about the compound itself, which Health Canada has never assessed for safety, efficacy or quality. | Answers the wrong question |
| I am permitted to compound BPC-157 | Very likely correct as a description of current federal practice — that permission is the entire subject of this page. Legality is not evidence of benefit, and Health Canada has said it is examining whether the related website advertising complied with the Act. | Legal ≠ proven |
| Physician-led; registered with the college | Both statements are true of both doctors. Registration is a licensing fact about the practitioner. No college licenses, reviews or endorses any particular treatment by registering the person who offers it. | Credential ≠ endorsement |
The federal regulator's reach stops at products. Physicians are regulated provincially — Seit by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Jiang by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia — and it is the colleges, not Health Canada, that set standards for what a doctor may claim, advertise and prescribe.
Ontario's college has a policy on complementary and alternative medicine, and the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal has relied on it before. In the case of Dr. Akbar Khan, a Toronto physician found incompetent over his use of dichloroacetate and other unproven treatments, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice upheld the college's CAM policy in 2023 as a valid basis for assessing a physician's conduct even though the policy does not itself carry the force of law. The tools exist.
We searched (July 2026) for published Canadian medical discipline decisions in which prescribing unauthorized peptides formed part of a finding against a physician. We did not locate any. That is an absence of findings, not proof that none exist: college discipline is slow, much of it resolves in ways that never reach a public register, and a matter opened this month would not surface publicly for years. Corrections and citations to anything we have missed are welcome and will be published.
Anyone defending peptide prescribing in Canada now has a new argument to reach for, and it landed the same week as the CBC story. So did its exact opposite.
On 23 and 24 July 2026 the FDA's Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee reviewed seven peptides for addition to the section 503A bulk drug substances list — the list that governs what US compounding pharmacies may legally work with. The committee voted to add six of the seven: BPC-157, MOTS-c, KPV, TB-500, epitalon and semax. Only emideltide was voted down. The FDA's own career scientists had recommended against all seven, and NBC News reported that the committee itself had ties to the peptide industry. Of the speakers urging approval, twenty were doctors, chemists and peptide business owners, arguing largely from personal and patient anecdote.
The vote is advisory. It must still go through formal rulemaking, and the agency is not bound by it. But it will be quoted, and it will be quoted as though a regulator has endorsed these compounds — which is precisely what did not happen. A committee overruling its own agency's scientific reviewers is not a finding that the evidence has changed. The evidence has not changed. What has changed is the political temperature around compounded wellness products in the United States, where the health secretary has publicly promoted peptides and pressed the FDA to widen access. Canadian clinics do not need permission from the FDA to borrow the headline.
On 30 July 2026, in South Bend, Indiana, US District Court Judge Cristal Brisco sentenced Matthew Kawa, owner of Paradigm Peptides, to 70 months — nearly six years — in federal prison. He had pleaded guilty to selling unapproved drugs and illegally importing them. The judge found he had ignored repeated regulatory warnings and left, in her words, an incredible trail of harm. Kawa agreed to forfeit $5 million. His sister and principal employee, Jennifer Stechkober, received 16 months; the judge found she was not the mastermind but had played an integral role.
Prosecutors put Paradigm's reach at 54,000 customers across all fifty states and eighty countries. Reported by Daniel Gilbert, Adam Yamaguchi and Laura Geller for CBS News, it is a rare criminal penalty in a market that has largely escaped one.
And one of the unapproved drugs Kawa was charged with selling was BPC-157 — the same compound an FDA advisory committee had voted to make more widely available six days earlier, and the same compound two Canadian physicians were recorded recommending the week before that.
Paradigm advertised exactly what the surviving vendors advertise today: made in America, 99% purity, third-party lab tested, and the disclaimer that the products were for research use only.
Court filings say the products were imported from China, India and elsewhere, and that the laboratory certificates were forged. When the government tested six compounds sold as mimicking the effects of testosterone, every one of them contained actual testosterone. As for the disclaimer, Kawa's own plea agreement disposes of it: I knew that Paradigm's products were being marketed and sold for human consumption.
This is the same "research use only" label Health Canada warned Canadians about in April 2026 — the label that does not make a product legal for human use. Here is a court record showing what it was for.
Paradigm also sold SARMs — selective androgen receptor modulators — labelled as dietary supplements. The FDA has warned that SARMs carry serious risks including elevated heart attack risk and psychosis.
Dan Murphy, a 32-year-old marketing consultant, told the court he began taking Paradigm's SARMs in 2023 believing they were no more consequential than a vitamin. Over several months he developed insomnia, grandiosity, severe cystic acne and then frank paranoia about his own family, and lost touch with reality without ever connecting it to the supplements. He learned what had happened only in February 2025, when a Department of Justice letter told him that products marketed as SARMs had in fact contained testosterone. An independent lab test on a bottle he still had came back positive. A medical expert, Erik Messamore, diagnosed steroid-induced psychosis. Murphy is suing Paradigm; Kawa is contesting the claim.
Kawa admitted in his plea that he did not test the SARM products his business sold. Prosecutors argued that the absence of testing was itself the measure of his recklessness.
Paradigm's website went offline in March 2024. Similarly named sites promptly appeared offering the same products — one of them using what appears to be the same fonts, colours and label design, and advertising research-grade peptides independently verified to better than 99% purity. Asked about it, that company said it has no affiliation with the former business or its owner, said it had not realised the design elements might be perceived as resembling the originals, and offered to redesign its labels.
George Karavetsos, a former FDA lawyer and federal prosecutor, described prosecuting bad actors in this market as a game of whack-a-mole. A healthcare lawyer quoted in the same report was more hopeful, noting that actual prison time is a different order of consequence from a cease-and-desist.
Set the ledger out in full. In the United States, a peptide seller is now serving nearly six years in federal prison. In Canada, a peptide seller is under a permanent injunction from the Superior Court of Québec with contempt proceedings held in reserve. In both countries, the same compound can be prescribed by a licensed physician with no consequence whatsoever.
American state regulators have at least begun warning health care providers against prescribing these products. No Canadian college has said anything at all.
This box is a general public resource about how to raise a concern with a health regulator. It is not a recommendation to file against any person named on this page.
Concerns about a physician in Ontario go to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario's Complaints and Concerns page. In British Columbia, they go to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Other provinces have their own colleges. Concerns about an unauthorized health product, or about a product being sold or advertised contrary to the Food and Drugs Act, go to Health Canada's Health Products and Food Branch Inspectorate.
Quotations are reproduced from the published CBC report. Where this page paraphrases what a speaker said, it is marked as a paraphrase and not as a quotation. Corrections: if any statement here is inaccurate or out of date, write to us and it will be fixed and the change noted.