4 ms·

Or we could just dissolve it and go back to being responsible for our own outcomes.

by jalapenos 3y ago

p1mrx 3y ago
How can an individual without a laboratory be responsible for the contents of a pill they purchased?
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  Read a detailed review from a well-regarded neutral party with a laboratory.
  - hwillis 3y ago
    If there were any market incentive whatsoever for that, it would already exist. The FDA does not have magical anticompetitive powers that make people care less. We have private and public postal services and railroads operating alongside each other. The best case scenario is that there is enough market will to allow a lab to monopolize the market, leaving you with the same problems as today but with even less standing in the way of fraud, like companies just paying for good reviews. The realistic case is that no such testing would happen, just like it was before the FDA.
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      > If there were any market incentive whatsoever for that, it would already exist. Consumer Reports already exists. https://www.consumerlab.com/ https://www.consumerlab.com/ exists. And the FDA is part of why there is no market for it. Note, for instance, tat the above-mentioned site reviews supplements, which don't have as many restrictions (and which do very much need these kinds of reviews). > like companies just paying for good reviews That would conflict with "respected review company", and leave an opportunity for a company that doesn't accept any kind of payment.
      - jrajav 3y ago
        What kind of precedent is there for this pattern working successfully, long term, in any industry? 'Review companies' get sabotaged all the time if they were ever reliable at all. I sure wouldn't want to rely on one for medicine I give to my family if it was anything like relying on Yelp for a decent restaurant. I'm not at all convinced that the open market is a valid locale for these incentives - it seems to come with inherent conflict of interest. Maybe it's reasonable for us to agree that some kinds of oversight are worth funding as a society without waiting for incentives to sprout up out of the ground.
        JoshTriplett 3y ago
        To be explicitly clear, I also think it might be a good idea to have a government-funded review laboratory in this context. (I don't automatically think it would thereby be uncorruptible, or even harder to corrupt, but guaranteeing its existence seems important.) But there's a huge difference between "review" and "prohibit".
  - swells34 3y ago
    Ah yes, because those are always easy to come by. Question: how do you know that this third party is both well-regarded and neutral? Answer: Read a detailed review from a well-regarded neutral party that conducts laboratory reviews. Just a small example of why the entire mentality behind "being responsible for our own outcomes" is utter bullshit. You want to be responsible for all your own outcomes, go live on an island by yourself. The rest of us live in a complex society where everyone is interdependent, and where strong governance over the things we depend on for survival is extremely important.
    - jalapenos 3y ago
      Self-responsiblity being "bullshit" is the most childish sentiment I've heard all year. Each of us are responsible for holding others accountable too, as we all currently do with other products. Someone's pill makes someone grow a third arm, they'll be on John Oliver in no time. And without being able to hide behind "FDA said it's OK" (a la opioid epidemic) they'll feel the full brunt of the consequences. Soviet-style dumping the power and responsiblity on government bureaus is lazy & stupid vice masquerading as virtue.
      - dboat 3y ago
        Rather than an agency that is accountable to publicly elected officials, in your mind profit driven entertainment businesses would perform this role more reliably? Self-responsibility is just a phrase. When elaborated into the idea you have suggested it crumbles. By the time the market corrects industrial causes of human suffering, far too much preventable suffering will have occurred. Unless you are philosophically indifferent to human suffering your ideas about self-responsibility are empty nonsense. You have no grounds to criticize others for childish sentiments.
        jalapenos 3y ago
        But this is starting from a conclusion that government bureaus are more effective at alleviating human suffering than market competition. That they're faster, and more effective, and so on. That's simply not true, and we have the entire experience of the eastern bloc that's conclusively proven it's not true. You're simply pretending organisations like the FDA are something they're not, and that they're nothing but good, and all ills must be blamed on private actors. That's picking your conclusion first based on an emotional need to have a warm cozy paternalistic fantasy of a protector government. Whereas in reality it's the opposite. The rapid innovation of the private sector, driven by consumers who want their suffering alleviated in the fastest and most effective way, is the suffering alleviator. And the slow, obstructive, and competition-free corrupted public sector, the FDA, is the one causing drug innovation costs to be sky high, thereby causing excess deaths and suffering that the private sector would otherwise have been preventing. You're siding with the baddy and blaming the goodies for his wrongdoing.
- jalapenos 3y ago
  In the internet age they have 100x more information available to them than during the snake oil age the FDA was formed during. There was no Googling "percocet reviews" back then. Additionally, we're now under a caveat venditor regime regarding product liability, whereas back then it was caveat emptor. Them being able to say "FDA approved it" lets them dump responsibility too (see opioid epidemic). Dumping the responsibility on a government bureau, while knowing full well those are on the opposite ends of the spectrums of reliability and innovation versus startups, is completely adsurd. It's strange that this got such downvoting in such a tech savvy community. You'd think they'd know better.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Immunity from liability makes for a powerful incentive to get FDA approval.
  - safety1st 3y ago
    I can't even begin to imagine how horrific the world would become if our way of determining whether all drugs were safe was reduced to just Googling for reviews about them. In what world does Googling for reviews result in accurate, unbiased, independent product information? Can I have some of what you're smoking? (I'll be sure to Google it first.) The idea is getting a negative response because this is a tech savvy community, everyone here is well aware that Google is an abusive monopoly that's far more concerned with leveraging its market power to line its pockets than it is with delivering accurate information. I can maybe buy that a free market solution could work for this, but citing Google as an example of a free market... nah, actually, I can't buy it at all. Are we really floating the idea that we don't need an FDA because Consumer Reports could do all the research we need to determine whether drugs are safe after they hit the market?
    - jalapenos 3y ago
      Perhaps you could keep the FDA, as a purely advisory institution. FDA approves you? Your product gets an FDA sticker. Otherwise, you sell it without one. Then people could choose how much they care what the FDA thinks. After all, the FDA rubber stamped the opioids. Your friendly local heroin dealer can gives you the same stamp of approval for his poppy based products. Also prevents the FDA actively killing people by raising the barriers to getting new drugs to them in time. Win win for all (except the FDA I suppose).
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Underwriters Laboratory and Consumer Reports are two free market answers.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Yeah but consumer reports is telling you whether your clothes will get clean in the washer, not whether you’ll die. Pretty much anything they test is regulated by safety by someone else. UL is a better example but it is defacto required by the US legal environment for any serious retailer. And UL/ETL stamps are notoriously faked on imported items. If that was the standard my drugs were made to, I’d avoid imports altogether, and trust only drugs made by a company that can be sued in my local court jurisdiction.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      The government has a proper role in preventing harm.

Or we could just dissolve it and go back to being responsible for our own outcomes.

p1mrx 3y ago

How can an individual without a laboratory be responsible for the contents of a pill they purchased?

JoshTriplett 3y ago
Read a detailed review from a well-regarded neutral party with a laboratory.
- hwillis 3y ago
  If there were any market incentive whatsoever for that, it would already exist. The FDA does not have magical anticompetitive powers that make people care less. We have private and public postal services and railroads operating alongside each other. The best case scenario is that there is enough market will to allow a lab to monopolize the market, leaving you with the same problems as today but with even less standing in the way of fraud, like companies just paying for good reviews. The realistic case is that no such testing would happen, just like it was before the FDA.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    > If there were any market incentive whatsoever for that, it would already exist. Consumer Reports already exists. https://www.consumerlab.com/ https://www.consumerlab.com/ exists. And the FDA is part of why there is no market for it. Note, for instance, tat the above-mentioned site reviews supplements, which don't have as many restrictions (and which do very much need these kinds of reviews). > like companies just paying for good reviews That would conflict with "respected review company", and leave an opportunity for a company that doesn't accept any kind of payment.
    - jrajav 3y ago
      What kind of precedent is there for this pattern working successfully, long term, in any industry? 'Review companies' get sabotaged all the time if they were ever reliable at all. I sure wouldn't want to rely on one for medicine I give to my family if it was anything like relying on Yelp for a decent restaurant. I'm not at all convinced that the open market is a valid locale for these incentives - it seems to come with inherent conflict of interest. Maybe it's reasonable for us to agree that some kinds of oversight are worth funding as a society without waiting for incentives to sprout up out of the ground.
      - JoshTriplett 3y ago
        To be explicitly clear, I also think it might be a good idea to have a government-funded review laboratory in this context. (I don't automatically think it would thereby be uncorruptible, or even harder to corrupt, but guaranteeing its existence seems important.) But there's a huge difference between "review" and "prohibit".
- swells34 3y ago
  Ah yes, because those are always easy to come by. Question: how do you know that this third party is both well-regarded and neutral? Answer: Read a detailed review from a well-regarded neutral party that conducts laboratory reviews. Just a small example of why the entire mentality behind "being responsible for our own outcomes" is utter bullshit. You want to be responsible for all your own outcomes, go live on an island by yourself. The rest of us live in a complex society where everyone is interdependent, and where strong governance over the things we depend on for survival is extremely important.
  - jalapenos 3y ago
    Self-responsiblity being "bullshit" is the most childish sentiment I've heard all year. Each of us are responsible for holding others accountable too, as we all currently do with other products. Someone's pill makes someone grow a third arm, they'll be on John Oliver in no time. And without being able to hide behind "FDA said it's OK" (a la opioid epidemic) they'll feel the full brunt of the consequences. Soviet-style dumping the power and responsiblity on government bureaus is lazy & stupid vice masquerading as virtue.
    - dboat 3y ago
      Rather than an agency that is accountable to publicly elected officials, in your mind profit driven entertainment businesses would perform this role more reliably? Self-responsibility is just a phrase. When elaborated into the idea you have suggested it crumbles. By the time the market corrects industrial causes of human suffering, far too much preventable suffering will have occurred. Unless you are philosophically indifferent to human suffering your ideas about self-responsibility are empty nonsense. You have no grounds to criticize others for childish sentiments.
      - jalapenos 3y ago
        But this is starting from a conclusion that government bureaus are more effective at alleviating human suffering than market competition. That they're faster, and more effective, and so on. That's simply not true, and we have the entire experience of the eastern bloc that's conclusively proven it's not true. You're simply pretending organisations like the FDA are something they're not, and that they're nothing but good, and all ills must be blamed on private actors. That's picking your conclusion first based on an emotional need to have a warm cozy paternalistic fantasy of a protector government. Whereas in reality it's the opposite. The rapid innovation of the private sector, driven by consumers who want their suffering alleviated in the fastest and most effective way, is the suffering alleviator. And the slow, obstructive, and competition-free corrupted public sector, the FDA, is the one causing drug innovation costs to be sky high, thereby causing excess deaths and suffering that the private sector would otherwise have been preventing. You're siding with the baddy and blaming the goodies for his wrongdoing.
jalapenos 3y ago
In the internet age they have 100x more information available to them than during the snake oil age the FDA was formed during. There was no Googling "percocet reviews" back then. Additionally, we're now under a caveat venditor regime regarding product liability, whereas back then it was caveat emptor. Them being able to say "FDA approved it" lets them dump responsibility too (see opioid epidemic). Dumping the responsibility on a government bureau, while knowing full well those are on the opposite ends of the spectrums of reliability and innovation versus startups, is completely adsurd. It's strange that this got such downvoting in such a tech savvy community. You'd think they'd know better.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Immunity from liability makes for a powerful incentive to get FDA approval.
- safety1st 3y ago
  I can't even begin to imagine how horrific the world would become if our way of determining whether all drugs were safe was reduced to just Googling for reviews about them. In what world does Googling for reviews result in accurate, unbiased, independent product information? Can I have some of what you're smoking? (I'll be sure to Google it first.) The idea is getting a negative response because this is a tech savvy community, everyone here is well aware that Google is an abusive monopoly that's far more concerned with leveraging its market power to line its pockets than it is with delivering accurate information. I can maybe buy that a free market solution could work for this, but citing Google as an example of a free market... nah, actually, I can't buy it at all. Are we really floating the idea that we don't need an FDA because Consumer Reports could do all the research we need to determine whether drugs are safe after they hit the market?
  - jalapenos 3y ago
    Perhaps you could keep the FDA, as a purely advisory institution. FDA approves you? Your product gets an FDA sticker. Otherwise, you sell it without one. Then people could choose how much they care what the FDA thinks. After all, the FDA rubber stamped the opioids. Your friendly local heroin dealer can gives you the same stamp of approval for his poppy based products. Also prevents the FDA actively killing people by raising the barriers to getting new drugs to them in time. Win win for all (except the FDA I suppose).
WalterBright 3y ago
Underwriters Laboratory and Consumer Reports are two free market answers.
- kube-system 3y ago
  Yeah but consumer reports is telling you whether your clothes will get clean in the washer, not whether you’ll die. Pretty much anything they test is regulated by safety by someone else. UL is a better example but it is defacto required by the US legal environment for any serious retailer. And UL/ETL stamps are notoriously faked on imported items. If that was the standard my drugs were made to, I’d avoid imports altogether, and trust only drugs made by a company that can be sued in my local court jurisdiction.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    The government has a proper role in preventing harm.