It seems like this is what the FDA is designed to do. Cost of FDA: someone might miss out on a beneficial treatment because it has not been reviewed by the FDA

It seems like this is what the FDA is designed to do. Cost of FDA: someone might miss out on a beneficial treatment because it has not been reviewed by the FDA (and may never be, given the cost of FDA approval). Benefit of FDA: prevents charlatans from fleecing medically-ignorant people (which is pretty much everyone) of their life savings just before they die, which might be better spent on proven treatments or left as inheritance. At some point, we decided that the benefits were worth the costs. Unfortunately, the benefits tend to be obvious and the costs tend to be more hidden. That usually results in overdoing it (in this case, perhaps overburdening the development and use of new treatments).