An HHS policy issued on Oct. 29, 2026 will expand access to six wellness peptides by allowing specialized compounding pharmacies to make and sell them. The analysis, written by a health law professor who researches FDA law and policy and republished from The Conversation, argues consumers will get more options and no additional safety checks.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and more than 7,000 of them occur naturally in the human body. Some have become approved medicines, including insulin and the GLP-1 drugs semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy), but the wellness peptides sold online and promoted by influencers are not evaluated by any regulator.

The six on the list

The compounds covered are BPC-157, Epitalon, KPV, MOTS-c, Semax and TB-500. The combination of BPC-157 and TB-500 circulates on social media as the "Wolverine stack," often recommended by influencers for muscle mass and postworkout recovery, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promoted these peptides on podcasts and during his Take Back Your Health tour.

How the vote happened

The FDA restricted several of these peptides in 2023, citing unnamed "significant safety concerns," which barred compounding pharmacies from making them while doing nothing to stop online sales. Kennedy pushed the agency to revisit that decision and appointed eight new members to the advisory committee involved, all of whom had ties to businesses selling or promoting peptides.

That committee voted 8-6 in July 2026 to expand access. FDA scientists had repeatedly told the committee there was not enough information on the safety and efficacy of the peptides to justify compounding them.

Enforcement discretion, and its history

The mechanism here is enforcement discretion: the agency has the legal authority to regulate but is signaling it will not use it, a tool normally reserved for products judged very low risk. The piece points to laboratory-developed diagnostic tests as the cautionary precedent, including a breast cancer screening test sold from 2008 that was confirmed in 2014 to have returned false negatives, and notes Theranos operated in the same unenforced category.

Bottom line

Compounding pharmacies have no obligation to test ingredients they buy from outside suppliers, and the FDA's own site warns that the regulatory gap allows "poor compounding practices." The author also argues the policy signals the agency is not interested in seeing these products studied, which may discourage research that could find real uses for them.