5 ms·
This is nothing new. The same has been going on in drug trials for years. The trials are paid for by the company making the drug. With FDA and (sometimes) NIH
by crag 15y ago
This is nothing new. The same has been going on in drug trials for years.
The trials are paid for by the company making the drug. With FDA and (sometimes) NIH oversight of course. But the FDA is terribly under funded. And the NIH is already a tool for the pharm industry.
And if a company's drug gets into trouble, a few calls to a few of our elected officials takes care of the little fact right quick.
We only hear about it when people die. Remember Vioxx?
- ramanujan 15y agoThe FDA is not underfunded. Its budget has more than doubled from 2006 to 2011: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/nation/la-na-fda-budget11-2010feb11 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/nation/la-na-fda-bud... When a business fails, its budget is cut as customers leave it in droves for other businesses. But when the FDA fails, the idea is to throw more money at it, to increase the budget of a failure. The problem is that the FDA is a monopoly. When it fails, which happens routinely, people should be able to look to alternate reviewers -- like the European or Japanese regulatory bodies. That doesn't happen right now.
- ori_b 15y agoWhat alternative do you propose to prevent drug companies from marketing unsafe or ineffective drugs? Yes, things could be improved, but taking apart the FDA isn't, IMO, a solution.
- archgoon 15y ago>The FDA is not underfunded. Its budget has more than doubled from 2006 to 2011: How much does it need to do its job? Has the amount of work stayed constant between 2006-2011? Was it properly funded in 2006?
- fleitz 15y agoIt needs zero because the market will provide these services. Or if it doesn't it would be clear that consumers didn't want these services.
- hessenwolf 15y agoWhy would the market provide these services? We could start to pay a company to tell us which drugs were safe, but they would only have one customer who would tell everybody else.
- thomas11 15y agoI'm not convinced it would actually work, but what the OP probably meant is that the pharma companies would pay the certification companies so they could put a "Certified by X" sticker on their packaging. The better X would certify, the more they could ask from the pharma company, so the market would reward proper certification.
- hessenwolf 15y agoErm... that's just the same as it is now. Pharma companies pay scientists to statistically test there products. My first year stats professor described how difficult it is to say to your employer after a year and a lot of cash that their toothpaste did not perform statistically significantly better than the placebo. How many more consultancy contracts are you going to get?
- techdmn 15y agoOnly provided that it's more profitable to provide consumers with clear information than to sell dangerous drugs.
- phren0logy 15y agoThat's one perspective. Here's another: [ScienceBasedMedicine.org](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-free-speech-about-science-act-h-r-1364-health-freedom-and-misinformed-consent/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-free-speec...)
- fleitz 15y agoWhy can't we have both? I'll accept the FDA wasting money, and in exchange I don't have to listen to them. The fact that homeopathy can be branded medicine virtually eliminates any point in having the FDA with regard to drug efficacy / safety.