4 ms·
This is the same FDA that forbade researchers from running their own tests in January and February[1], squandering our chance to prevent this catastrophe. It's
by ggreer 6y ago
This is the same FDA that forbade researchers from running their own tests in January and February[1], squandering our chance to prevent this catastrophe. It's only because researchers broke the law that we discovered community spread when we did.
100,000 Americans have died from this disease in the past 8 weeks. We can't afford to be cautious. Imperfect tests are better than nothing, especially if there are no bureaucratic hurdles to prevent the deployment of refined versions (such as saliva samples instead of nose swabs).
If not for the FDA, we would have an order of magnitude more testing. We'd have human challenge trials. We might even have variolation experiments. All of these could reduce the death rate by an order of magnitude. At this point it is no exaggeration to say that the FDA is responsible for mass death.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...
- James_Henry 6y agoI don't think that people realize the magnitude of the number of deaths that are directly due to unnecessary FDA regulation. The only reason that they found community spread in Washington when they did (a whole month after it had been spreading) is because of researchers who went around the regulations and then got shut down. If they had started their testing a week earlier, and if other states were allowed to test earlier, there would have been quicker lock downs across the country and NYC might have not been hit so devastatingly. I had hoped that people would see what has happened with the coronavirus testing and realize that these issues are systemic and have far reaching consequences beyond the current crisis.