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Surgery Works Well Without the FDA: The Best Evidence Against the FDA

2 points by jseliger 3y ago

coldtea 3y ago
>Alex claims that without the FDA, pharmaceutical companies would release lots of bunk drugs. I respond that we don’t see this behavior in other markets. Which is irrelevant, since we see this exact behavior in the drug sector, with tons of crap released, even with FDA approval. It's not a coincidence that one of the common references to invalid and crappy (and often dangerous) products sold to suckers is in the drug domain: what we call "snakeoil". That this (manufacturers putting out cheap dangerous bad crap for quick profit) doesn't happen with cars (the TFA author's other example) is because cars need huge investment to be designed, assembled, shipped, and stored. If you're going to alienate your target buyers by selling crap, you'll never be around long term to recuperate the costs. And of course a bad car can kill people, and get the vendor in messy trials paying huge recuperations (with far more frequency and certainty than legit car companies face today). Whereas, if you can forego trials and FDA approval, to package any BS and sell it as a drug for cancer or losing weight or whatever, has almost 0 upfront cost. Hell, already in the gray areas there are trillion dollars sold of tons of crap sold that the buyers imagine it serves medical purposes (and is being promoted as such) based on BS non-scientific magical thinking. Never mind the myriad of "herbal" cures, homeopathy crap, and so on: people will even by "healing crystals". And of course, in other loosely regulated markets, manufactures push all kinds of crap, to the point that Amazon is a wasteland when you search for cheap electronics for example.
thfuran 3y ago
>Car companies or computer manufacturers could release cheaply made, low quality products for high prices and consumers might have a tough time noticing the difference for a while. But they don’t do this That's an absolutely bizarre claim. Lots of shitty products are released in lots of industries. Computing is certainly one of them. And cars are pretty heavily regulated, so they shouldn't really be used as a regulatory-body-free reference.

2 points by jseliger 3y ago

>Alex claims that without the FDA, pharmaceutical companies would release lots of bunk drugs. I respond that we don’t see this behavior in other markets. Which is irrelevant, since we see this exact behavior in the drug sector, with tons of crap released, even with FDA approval. It's not a coincidence that one of the common references to invalid and crappy (and often dangerous) products sold to suckers is in the drug domain: what we call "snakeoil". That this (manufacturers putting out cheap dangerous bad crap for quick profit) doesn't happen with cars (the TFA author's other example) is because cars need huge investment to be designed, assembled, shipped, and stored. If you're going to alienate your target buyers by selling crap, you'll never be around long term to recuperate the costs. And of course a bad car can kill people, and get the vendor in messy trials paying huge recuperations (with far more frequency and certainty than legit car companies face today). Whereas, if you can forego trials and FDA approval, to package any BS and sell it as a drug for cancer or losing weight or whatever, has almost 0 upfront cost. Hell, already in the gray areas there are trillion dollars sold of tons of crap sold that the buyers imagine it serves medical purposes (and is being promoted as such) based on BS non-scientific magical thinking. Never mind the myriad of "herbal" cures, homeopathy crap, and so on: people will even by "healing crystals". And of course, in other loosely regulated markets, manufactures push all kinds of crap, to the point that Amazon is a wasteland when you search for cheap electronics for example.

thfuran 3y ago

>Car companies or computer manufacturers could release cheaply made, low quality products for high prices and consumers might have a tough time noticing the difference for a while. But they don’t do this That's an absolutely bizarre claim. Lots of shitty products are released in lots of industries. Computing is certainly one of them. And cars are pretty heavily regulated, so they shouldn't really be used as a regulatory-body-free reference.