Interview: California Lawmaker Calls for a Peptide Working Group

Should Americans have access to therapies that have not been fully vetted? Next month, an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will weigh the question in the context of seven peptides marketed for benefits such as weight loss, tissue repair, and longevity. These particular peptides have not passed through the rigorous human testing required for drug approval. And in 2023, the FDA added them to its list of substances that should not be used by compounding pharmacies due to safety concerns.

Still, the substances, which include MOTS-c and TB-500, have remained popular. They are also relatively easy to obtain on the gray market. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — himself, a “big fan of peptides” — has suggested that compounding pharmacies should be allowed to dispense these substances to patients who might otherwise be at risk of purchasing contaminated products from gray-market vendors.

Amid this national push, California legislator Joe Patterson has introduced a state-level bill that would require the California Department of Public Health to establish a peptide-related working group. The group would be tasked with making recommendations to allow physicians and hospitals, among others, to prescribe and study certain peptides. In an interview with Undark, Patterson stressed peptides’ potential therapeutic benefits and echoed Kennedy’s view that “peptides are like supplements,” a reclassification that would allow the substances onto the market without the rigorous (though arguably slow and costly) testing required of drugs. And he occasionally characterized the substances as low-risk — a view that many researchers and physicians dispute.

Our interview took place over Zoom and has been edited for length and clarity.

Undark: Who has asked for this kind of legislation?

Joe Patterson: This was a Joe Patterson special. I’ve become, personally — “passionate” is such an overused word — but interested in health benefits from peptide use. I’ve used them myself, some of them prescribed at the time when they were allowed to be prescribed, and some of them not prescribed. I’ve personally seen the benefits.

That said, since that time, I’ve obviously met a lot of people in the industry. We’ve started following each other on social media. People that are not influencers, in the sense of they’re selling their products, but they’re studying and they’re researching it. They’re looking into the products. So nobody’s really asked for it, but I’ve seen the need from the community because there’s so much interest in helping people — from the medical community, from people who are functional doctors, things like that.

I mean, the bottom line is, people are using peptides. And what’s the safest mechanism in which we can actually encourage that and actually get more access to [peptides] for people who don’t otherwise have access?

UD: You’ve mentioned both access and research. Is there a specific type of peptide research that you’re hoping this working group would consider supporting?

JP: You know what’s interesting is a lot of the peptides have a lot of studies already. Maybe they’re not the FDA-level of studies, or some of them began trials and maybe stopped for whatever reason. I mean, you can list a whole host of reasons why they stopped. But a lot of them do have those peer-reviewed studies, placebo, all those things. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t go into all those. But I would like to see more of that research occur in California.

But I’ll say, in terms of type of research: Right now, we have a lot of anecdotal data. I mean, we have some studies, but it’s a lot of anecdotal data. So I wouldn’t dictate to the scientists the kind of data that we would need.

UD: Right to Try laws allow patients with terminal conditions to try drugs that have passed through early safety trials but have not yet been fully vetted. Is there a case for extending this policy to people who are interested in, say, healthy aging? I know that’s one of the reasons why some people take peptides that haven’t yet been approved.

JP: What’s the downside to that? There are so many research compounds out there that, by the way, are practically freely accessible online, where there’s nominal risk. Maybe there will be some risk. But I would offer that many approved drugs have greater risk than some peptides. I’ve never really used the right-to-use terminology. I’ve more used the therapeutic use. But the one thing that really bothers me is that the United States has, in its history, a track record of denying, or not approving, or limiting access to extremely important therapeutic compounds.

UD: The clinical trial process that the FDA requires was put in place after the thalidomide disaster. The desire was, in part: To the extent that some drugs do cause harm, certainly a lot of them have side effects — even approved drugs — that we can know what those harms are in advance. Whereas, if you’re taking [a medication] that hasn’t gone through the process, there’s less knowledge.

JP: I think science is smart enough, especially in 2026 with AI and all those sorts of things. I happen to also sit on our Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee in the California Legislature, where we talk about how terrific AI can be for medical research, for biotechnology, and the risk of so many of these drugs is, as far as we can tell, insanely nominal. But the upside is so high.

UD: Some people see efforts to bring experimental peptides to patients as part of a broader deregulatory effort that would weaken the FDA’s authority to vet drugs. Is this how you see it?

JP: One thing we got to think about with peptides is that they are very small chains of amino acids. Yeah, sure, they’re synthetically made in a lab or whatnot, but these are compounds that exist in your body already. And I kind of actually like Robert Kennedy’s — at one point, he said they’re basically supplements because they already exist. Essential amino acids that you might be able to buy at the grocery store [are] substantially similar to a peptide.

It’s not about weakening the FDA. It’s about modernizing the FDA to where medicine is going in 2026.

UD: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

JP: What we’re seeing around the country — outside of maybe what the FDA is doing right now under Secretary Kennedy’s work — but what we’re seeing in other states and even introduction on the federal level, are bans. Straight-up bans to various peptides basically because of wanting to protect the patents of pharmaceutical companies that have invested billions of dollars in things like GLP-1s.

So my legislation actually took all of that out. If you have something that’s been approved by the FDA for particular use, and it’s not available in generic form, then we’re not talking about that unless you have some kind of license from that pharmaceutical company to study it for some other kind of product.

So this could actually even benefit the pharmaceutical companies because if you have a GLP-1, and you kind of know that it can benefit you — your addiction receptors, for example — but you’re not really going to go down that approval process, well, maybe there’s a research group that would actually help you do that and move it forward for those purposes.

California, or at least the way we’re looking at it here — at least, Joe Patterson — the legislation is moving forward. We’re looking at it much different. We shouldn’t be limiting access to peptides. We should be finding a way in which we can move the conversation forward on these products.

And look, I’m not going to say there’s no risk to them. There are risks to them. Something like MOTS-c, a lot of people have allergic reactions to it and can end up in the hospital. But I think because of the risks, is why we need this. You hear about the stories of people going to the emergency room because they’re basically injecting too much of whatever. So why are we not doing something to help people get these beneficial compounds and do it safely?

UD: Well, thank you. I really appreciate your time. This has been an interesting conversation.

JP: I love this, I honestly love this topic. It’s super exciting, and it’s a good time to be alive with all the pharmaceutical stuff going on. It’s a very exciting time.