RFK Jr. Fills FDA Peptide Panel With Industry Insiders. FDA's Own Scientists Say the Drugs Lack Evidence.

The Setup

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made no secret of his affection for injectable peptides. He has said publicly that he uses them himself and has vowed to end what he calls the FDA's "aggressive suppression" of the drugs. On Monday, that preference translated into personnel.

The FDA updated the membership list for its Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, the panel scheduled to meet July 23 and 24 to review seven peptide compounds. Nine new members were added, bringing the total to 13. According to the Associated Press, the new group "mainly includes health professionals who prescribe, produce or promote peptides." This marks a sharp departure from previous iterations of the panel, which drew members from universities including Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins.

Who's on the Panel

The additions are specific. Gabriel Alizaidy is a scientific director at Maximus, a "personal performance medicine" clinic that offers peptide injections. The FDA recently sent Maximus a warning letter over what it called "false or misleading" claims about peptides used for weight loss, according to Ars Technica. Alizaidy also promotes peptides on social media and in a newsletter.

Panel member Dr. Haleem Mohammed runs clinics in Florida under the Gameday Men's Health brand that sell injections of peptides, vitamins, testosterone, and weight loss medications, according to the AP.

The pattern holds across the new membership: financial or professional stakes in the peptide industry, not arms-length academic research.

What FDA Scientists Actually Found

Simultaneously with releasing the panel list, the FDA posted detailed briefing documents for the July meetings. The career scientists who wrote them reached the same conclusion the agency reached in 2023: there is not enough evidence of safety or efficacy to justify allowing compounding pharmacies to produce these drugs for human use.

NPR Illinois reported that the scientists flag "potential safety concerns and a lack of consistent data" across the seven peptides under review. Those seven include BPC-157, being evaluated for ulcerative colitis; TB-500, for wound healing; MOTs-C, for obesity and osteoporosis; emideltide, for opioid withdrawal and insomnia; semax, for migraines and cerebral ischemia; epitalon, for insomnia; and KPV, for wound healing and inflammation.

BPC-157 and TB-500 are both classified as doping substances by international sports authorities.

Dr. Alexander Weber, an orthopedic surgeon and chief of sports medicine at the University of Southern California who has published a review of the peptide evidence, told NPR: "Not a day goes by where I don't have a number of patients asking me about peptides. My stock answer is that we just don't have enough data to support their use."

The Conflict That Matters

The strongest argument for revisiting the 2023 restrictions is not nothing. Supporters of expanded peptide access point out that the Biden administration's 2023 decision pushed users toward an unregulated gray market, where injectable peptides are often sourced from overseas suppliers with no quality controls. If compounding pharmacies under FDA oversight could produce these drugs, the argument goes, patients who are going to use them anyway would at least get a cleaner product. Kennedy has framed the current policy as paternalism that doesn't reduce use, it just makes use more dangerous.

That's a legitimate public health argument. But the way to evaluate it is with scientists who don't have a financial stake in the answer. Stacking a panel with people who run peptide clinics doesn't resolve the safety question. It predetermines who gets to weigh in on it.

Previous FDA advisory panels on the same peptide compounds, composed of those academic researchers, voted against allowing compounding of the drugs, finding them too risky. It is not a coincidence that the panel composition changed after a new secretary declared himself a fan of the product.

What the FDA Can and Cannot Do

The FDA is not legally bound to follow its advisory committees' recommendations. The agency's own briefing document states it "does not intend to issue a final determination on the issues at hand until input from the advisory committee process has been considered and all reviews have been finalized," and notes the final determination "may be affected by issues not discussed at the advisory committee meeting."

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who serves under Kennedy, has not publicly broken with the secretary's position on peptides.

A second round of meetings, covering five additional peptides, is scheduled before the end of February 2027.

The Unresolved Question

FDA career scientists have now twice — in 2023 and in these new briefing documents — concluded that the evidence is insufficient to support broader peptide access. The panel Kennedy's department assembled will hear from that career staff in July. Whether the committee's recommendations track the industry interests of its members or the agency's own scientific record is the question that will answer itself on July 23.