RFK Jr.’s HHS is letting pharmacies sell 6 unproven peptides like the ‘Wolverine stack’ — and no regulator will check what’s in them
The vote came after FDA scientists repeatedly told the committee that there was not enough information about the safety and efficacy of the peptides to justify letting compounding pharmacies sell them.
Key points
- 29, 2026, will expand access to six peptides by allowing specialized pharmacies to make and sell them.
- Until now, consumers were getting wellness peptides online through the so-called gray market, where companies rely on legal loopholes to sell them.
- For example, wellness influencers refer to the combination of BPC-157 and TB-500 as the “ Wolverine stack,” after the Marvel comics superhero, often recommending it for building muscle mass and speeding up postworkout recovery.
In this case, the agency is using a policy tool known as enforcement discretion to let these pharmacies know that there will be no legal consequences if they sell the six listed wellness peptides.
Additional details
- How the new policy works The new policy allows small compounding pharmacies to sell these six peptides.
- Unregulated peptides for weight loss, muscle building, longevity and more are a roaring wellness fad – even though these substances have not been proved safe and effective and have not been approved by the U.S.
- But the slew of “wellness” peptides promoted by influencers and sold online or at wellness stores are not evaluated by any regulator.
- Compounding pharmacies are licensed to produce and sell a very small set of drugs that are not reviewed and approved by the FDA.
- For example, during a recent shortage of some weight-loss drugs, the FDA used enforcement discretion to allow some compounding pharmacies to produce the drug to help ease the shortage.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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