How this site decides what is true

The governing principle

Be the fastest accurate source, not the loudest source. Where speed and accuracy conflict, accuracy wins and the update waits.

Source hierarchy

Claims are established in this order, and a lower tier never overrides a higher one:

1. Regulators. The FDA's own records — Drugs@FDA, the openFDA APIs, warning letters, guidance.
2. Trial registries. ClinicalTrials.gov entries, which sponsors are legally required to keep current.
3. Sponsor disclosures. Lilly press releases, investor materials, SEC filings.
4. Peer-reviewed literature. Journal publications that survived external review.

Secondary coverage is used only to discover that something happened. The primary document is then retrieved and read before anything is published.Every source is catalogued.

Four kinds of statement, always distinguished

• Official fact. Established by a regulator or registry. Example: retatrutide has no approval record in Drugs@FDA.
• Company projection. Something Lilly has said it intends to do. Example: a Q1 2027 filing. Labelled as a projection wherever it appears.
• Editorial interpretation. This site's reading of what something means. Example: the observation that TRIUMPH-3's confidence intervals crossing 1.0 means no cardiovascular benefit was demonstrated.
• Unknown. Stated as unknown rather than filled with a plausible guess.

What counts as a material change

An entry in the update log, and a possible email alert, requires one of:

• An FDA action or decision on retatrutide.
• A regulatory submission, or the FDA accepting or refusing to file one.
• Assignment of a PDUFA date.
• A Phase 3 trial readout.
• Peer-reviewed publication of Phase 3 results.
• A material change in trial status on ClinicalTrials.gov — a halt, a termination, a completion.
• A public statement by Lilly about regulatory timing.

These never produce an update entry or an email:

• Design changes, article edits, routine re-verification.
• Analyst notes, price targets, stock movement.
• Press coverage that reports no new primary fact.
• Social media claims, forum posts, vendor announcements.

Verification and timestamps

The status shown across this site comes from one data file. It is not restated by hand on individual pages, so the homepage, the status badge, the JSON endpoint and the email alerts cannot drift apart. A build-time check refuses to publish if they do, or if a claim of approval is not backed by a regulator-tier source.

The “last verified” timestamp is the moment a human last opened the FDA record and Lilly's newsroom and confirmed the status still holds — not the moment the site was last deployed.

Handling numbers

Every trial figure is read from the source document rather than from a summary. Weight-loss percentages are reported with the trial, the dose, the duration, the population and the estimand, because a percentage without those is not a fact. Placebo arms are always shown alongside active arms.

Where sources disagree, both figures are published. Lilly's release for TRIUMPH-1 says 2,339 randomised; the registry says 2,335. Both appear, rather than one being quietly chosen.

Topline results and peer-reviewed results are labelled differently everywhere they appear.

What this site will not publish

• An approval date, until the FDA sets one.
• A PDUFA date, until an application has been accepted.
• A countdown to approval. The timers on this site count time since verification, and time until a stated filing window — nothing else.
• Dosing guidance, administration instructions, or anything that reads as clinical advice for a drug nobody can be prescribed.
• Price forecasts presented as anything but speculation.
• Links to sellers of research retatrutide, affiliate or otherwise.
• Rumours, including plausible ones.
• A claimed medical reviewer. There is no medical reviewer, so no page says “medically reviewed”.

Corrections

Errors get fixed as soon as they are identified, and logged publicly at/corrections with what was wrong, what it was changed to, and when. Corrections are not silently edited into place. If a correction changes the regulatory status itself, subscribers are told.

Independence and funding

Independent tracker. Not affiliated with Eli Lilly, the FDA, or any regulatory agency. This site is independently operated. It currently carries no advertising, no sponsorship and no affiliate links.

If that changes, it will be disclosed on this page and on the page carrying it, before it earns anything. Categories that will never be accepted: sellers of research chemicals or unapproved peptides, and anyone whose interest depends on this site describing the regulatory status as further along than it is.

Use of AI tools

Research and drafting here involve AI assistance. Every factual claim, figure and date is checked by a human against the primary source before publication, and the build refuses to ship if the data model is internally inconsistent. No page is published from model output alone.

Who writes this

Evan Marsh, a pen name. Not a physician, pharmacist, researcher or clinician. The work is editorial and research: reading filings, registry entries and disclosures, and reporting what they say.Nothing here is medical advice.