4 ms·
I think the monopoly that the FDA has on approving medical equipment and tests has had far more of an impact than any commercial concerns.
by dantheman 7y ago
I think the monopoly that the FDA has on approving medical equipment and tests has had far more of an impact than any commercial concerns.
- luckydata 7y agothat's nonsense. It's like saying the monopoly of the FBI in enforcing federal law is a public safety issue.
- James_Henry 7y agoIf there aren't checks and balances, then what do you expect?
- missedthecue 7y agoIt's not nonsense. A couple years back, the FDA had a press release where they admitted they killed 1 million people. They had finally cleared a heart attack prevention drug for sale in the US that had already been legal and approved and prescribed in the EU for 10 years prior. In the press release, the FDA said that as a result of their benevolent approval, the drug would save 100,000 people a year.
- CodeAndCuffs 7y agoWasn't there a drug that all of Europe said was super safe, but the FDA held out on for years, and it ended up causing terrible birth defects? It's easy to say that a group is unnecessarily cautious/reckless until that cautiousness/recklessness saves lives or kills people. Hindsight 20/20 and all.
- missedthecue 7y agoThat was Thalidomide and it was legal in the US. At any rate my point wasn't that the FDA only makes bad decisions. My point was that it has a monopoly on approving new medicines and therepeutics, and it is not at all clear that this monopoly is a net good or net bad. (And it's impossible to measure because we can't tell how thing would have played out for things that never happened)
- BurningFrog 7y agoThere are two kinds of errors an FDA type agency can make: A: Approve a drug that turns out to be a "cure worse than the disease", and shouldn't have been approved. B: Not approve a drug that would have cured many sick and/or saved a lot of lives. You can never fully know beforehand which error a decision will have. So the FDA will always gamble a bit in their decisions. And here is the gigantic problem: With a type A error, patients taking the new drug dies, there is an uproar in the media, the agency takes a big beating, and careers are ruined. With a type B error, a lot of people who could have been saved dies. But that is no change from before, no one notices, and the careers of FDA officials are unharmed. Given these incentives, it is not surprising that the FDA overwhelmingly errs on the side of type B errors. It's hard to compute, but the number of lost lives from this is probably in the millions since the 60s.
- dantheman 7y agoIn type A, people have a choice. They could be informed there is a risk. In type b, they have no choice.
- sharemywin 7y ago
- BurningFrog 7y agoThe sentences look similar. But that doesn't mean the underlying reality is equivalent.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- plussed_reader 7y agoDon't you worry now, Easy D and the Corporate Raiders are getting around that pesky regulatory body to bring you the finest suggestions directly from the their Facebook focus groups and Offal Office Microphone!
- James_Henry 7y agoThis should be one of the big takeaways from Covid-19, but I sadly think that it won't be because people don't fully understand the waste and danger of the way the FDA does things. Also, their drug regulations don't take into consideration rational decision theory and instead are overly focused on traditional hypothesis testing. Also, I'd suggest reading the following about how bad regulation kills people: http://www.josiahzayner.com/2020/04/all-my-friends-are-dying.html http://www.josiahzayner.com/2020/04/all-my-friends-are-dying...