Generally speaking: Whether something should be "on the market" and "how it should be used" are two different things. As political examples, natzism should def

Generally speaking: Whether something should be "on the market" and "how it should be used" are two different things. As political examples, natzism should definitely be "off the market"! But different forms of socialism can work well for some groups of people. Same as unregulated anarcho-capitalism might work well for other that share the values and accept the tradeoffs. But about the whole family of technocratic governments or of forms of governance base on cybernetic models, or of social orders with a "minimum guaranteed income" or maybe others even more exotic we have no usable experimental data! Addressing the specifics: Withdrawing vioxx from the market was, rationally speaking, a bad idea for the patients at the time, the rational thing to do would have been to modify the prescription guidelines and availability. But considering the reality of lots of MDs being not always up to date or just stupid (especially when it comes to 'kind of subtle to some' pharmacology issues, speaking from a 'past life' experience in the healthcare area), lives might have been saved by removing it from the market, especially in the USA where it was overprescribed. Nowadays there are other selective COX-2 inhibitors available, so the fact that vioxx is no longer on the market doesn't matter - there are mostly equivalent or better alternatives. About a hypothetical "drug that cures sickle-cell anemia, but gives a 100% chance of getting cancer by age 70": it should obviously be on the market. There are countless people dying from sickle-cell anemia, and, if regulated as a "last resort" treatment it would be a true life saver. I would be used just like aggressive chemotherapy or heavy dose radiation therapy is used (is can cure your current cancer or put it into remission, but it will almost surely give you cancer if you live long enough after it). Also: maybe the drug approval example was a bad analogy and it just pushed things off topic... Also: kudos for the link, it really is insightful! EDIT+: I think you misunderstood me, the example with the drug trial was about what should not happen, but happens now in politics! I phrased it like this to make it obvious how wrong it would be if, for example, we did medical research the way we do politics.