Americans took Prevagen for years—as the FDA questioned its safety

PLUS: The evolution of ClickHole, and how 30 lines of code blew up a generator. View this email in your browser  |  Manage newsletter subscriptions  10.25.20 Would you eat 800 pounds of jellyfish every day to try to improve your memory? That's the idea behind Prevagen. The dietary supplement's main ingredient is a synthetic copy of a jellyfish protein, grown entirely in a lab. As its manufacturer informed the Food and Drug Administration in 2007, one capsule "would be the equivalent of 400–800 lbs of raw jellyfish consumed." This week on Backchannel, investigative reporter Chiara Eisner dove into the history of Prevagen and its manufacturer, Quincy Bioscience, a Wisconsin-based startup that turned an idea about jellyfish into a multimillion-dollar business whose products appear on retail shelves and in prime-time ads nationwide. For most of that time, largely unbeknownst to consumers, the company was under investigation. Based on interviews and hundreds of pages of FDA documents, many never reported before, Eisner reconstructs a years-long dance between Quincy and US regulators over what exactly Prevagen was, what the supplement claimed to do, and whether it was safe for people to take. As thousands of Americans reported experiencing health issues while taking Prevagen—including seizures, strokes, heart arrhythmias, chest pain, and dizziness—FDA officials grew alarmed. "These are not typical complaints associated with supplements," one investigator told Quincy after an inspection in 2015. "The serious nature and quantity of complaints raises questions about the safety of the product." The FDA also repeatedly faulted the company's procedures for investigating and reporting complaints, as required by law, in addition to its manufacturing and quality control practices. Quincy insists that Prevagen "has been thoroughly tested" and "is generally recognized as safe." In 2018, the FDA issued the company a close-out letter, its way of saying a firm has corrected violations. But lawmakers, consumer safety advocates, and even agency officials say broader issues remain with how the supplement industry is regulated, leaving millions of Americans at risk. Caitlin Kelly | Senior Editor, WIRED   SUPPLEMENTS Americans Took Prevagen for Years—as the FDA Questioned Its Safety BY CHIARA EISNER From the memory supplement's launch in 2007 through 2016, agency officials repeatedly raised concerns as the number of consumer complaints grew.   BACKCHANNEL ClickHole Started as a Meat Joke. Can It Avoid Being Offal? BY KATE KNIBBS The humor site has survived it all: new owners, layoffs, a culture war. Now a worker-owned cooperative, it needs to update its voice—and bring home the bacon.   BOOK EXCERPT How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator BY ANDY GREENBERG A secret experiment in 2007 proved that hackers could devastate power grid equipment beyond repair—with a file no bigger than a gif.   INFORMATION ECOLOGY The Election Will Bring a Hurricane of Misinformation BY WHITNEY PHILLIPS Here's how to prepare yourself for the disaster online.   BIG DUB 'Wait, Sylvie's Dad Plays?!' The Joy of Fortnite Parenting BY TOM VANDERBILT I picked up the controller to keep tabs on my fifth-grader. What I got was a window into her world—and a lesson in 21st-century fatherhood.   IDEAS The Improbable Appeal of TikTok Tarot BY ALISHA MUGHAL You'd think that have a reading delivered via machine algorithm would make it feel less useful or relevant. You'd think wrong.         This e-mail was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or manage your newsletter subscriptions