4 ms·
One big reason is you're removing the economic incentive to produce good evidence. The herbal remedies industry is a perfect example, there will be valid treatm
by Brakenshire 5y ago
One big reason is you're removing the economic incentive to produce good evidence. The herbal remedies industry is a perfect example, there will be valid treatments there but yet the industry is almost entirely medically useless. Some of the treatments might be effective for particular diseases, at particular doses but no one ever knows. These companies have billions in revenue and are vastly profitable but they never look for evidence that treatments work because people buy the remedies anyway, and a company that spent the money to run the trials would be undercut by less scrupulous competition. This is not even a market with asymmetry of knowledge, it's a market where no one knows anything, and the lack of regulation makes sure it continues that way.
- themacguffinman 5y agoThere's still an economic incentive for the highest level of FDA approval: Medicare and insurance companies have to cover it and doctors can prescribe it. That ensures a high and consistent level of usage across the whole country, not just among people with more money than sense (usually IMHO; it's possible that they're just smarter & savvier than the notoriously conservative FDA, who knows, this is a big reason why taking away choice is bad on principle). I don't think the lack of credible evidence of efficacy in the supplement market is for lack of trying. If an alternative medicine is actually effective, it just becomes medicine that the majority of people can trust and use.