As of this week, Montana has essentially become the wild west of experimental medicine. Any biotech company with a drug that has undergone preliminary testing - sometimes in as few as 10 healthy people - can pay $12,500 to a newly established review board and, if approved, sell it directly to consumers. The first experimental treatment clinic is expected to open by the end of this year, and the price of the drug? The company decides. Because why let pesky market forces or FDA oversight get in the way of innovation?
Montana's latest right-to-try legislation is unique in that it doesn't restrict access to the terminally ill, as other jurisdictions do. Here, anyone who gives informed consent and can pay can get their hands on experimental drugs - whether they're desperate for a rare disease treatment or just want to try out a longevity drug as a preventive measure. Because who doesn't want to be a human lab rat for the sake of living forever?
The state's Department of Health and Human Services recently finalized rules to implement the law, requiring fully informed consent and a review board that includes a Montana-certified doctor, expert scientists, and an ethicist. Supporters, like Matt Kaeberlein, a scientist on the first board, insist the process will be rigorous and responsible. But experts like Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, are concerned about selling unproven treatments without FDA oversight. "I would be concerned," he says, with the understatement of someone who hasn't yet seen the price list.
The movement to make unapproved drugs more accessible is growing, but Montana's law is special: it's been driven by longevity enthusiasts rather than the usual libertarian and patient groups. State senator Ken Bogner, who supported the expansion in 2023, dreams of focusing on preventive medicine rather than treating diseases once they appear. The Alliance for Longevity Initiatives (A4LI), a nonprofit dedicated to increasing healthy human lifespan, helped draft the bill.
Enter Niklas Anzinger, a tech entrepreneur and longevity enthusiast based in Próspera, a private city in Honduras known for selling experimental stem-cell and gene therapies. He's now turned his attention to Montana, working with unnamed biotech companies to draft a second bill that laid out the terms for clinics offering unapproved drugs. That law passed in April 2025, and the rules were finalized just this week - after what Anzinger describes as "taking a very long time."
With the rules in hand, Anzinger and his colleague Stephen Martin established the Montana ETRB, the state's first independent experimental treatment review board. The board includes James Burke, a Montana-licensed oncologist; Jessica Flanigan, a libertarian bioethicist known for her book Pharmaceutical Freedom; and three longevity community heavyweights: Felipe Sierra, former NIH aging arm senior official and Hevolution Foundation chief scientific officer; Matt Kaeberlein, who's studied rapamycin as a longevity therapeutic; and Jamie Justice, executive director of the X Prize Healthspan competition, which has $101 million in prize money. A board with a $101 million incentive to find anti-aging treatments - what could possibly go wrong?
Infinita, Anzinger's umbrella company, will pay board members a flat fee funded by the $12,500 application fees. Anzinger insists the board's decisions are independent, even though the board's website originally implied it was an official state body before being updated to note it's a private service run by Montana Governance Services Inc., which is under the Infinita umbrella. Because nothing says independence like a private company paying the people who approve the drugs its clients are selling.
So far, two applications have been submitted: one from Stanley Kim's WinSanTor for a peripheral neuropathy treatment (currently in phase II trials), and another for a hearing loss drug. Kim says he receives messages from desperate patients, some suicidal, who want access to his drug. He hopes to collect data from them to accelerate approval, while still pursuing regular clinical trials. Meanwhile, Thomas Joudinaud of Ceres Brain Therapeutics is holding back, worried that a mishap in Montana could jeopardize his company's standing with the FDA. The FDA, for its part, says it doesn't comment on state legislation, and experts like Chris Robertson note that FDA positions can change with new administrations. "I wouldn't bet on anything that the FDA is saying today being applicable when the rubber hits the road later," he says.
There's already a safer alternative: the FDA's expanded-access program, which approves over 99% of applications and takes less than 45 minutes to fill out. But that's for seriously ill patients. In Montana, anyone can access experimental drugs if they're willing to sign a consent form and open their wallet. So if you've ever wanted to try an unproven longevity drug without the inconvenience of a terminal illness, Montana is your destination. Just remember: informed consent is required, but common sense is optional.