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I'm not a libertarian, but it seems to me that making drug certification take 15 years and a billion dollars kills more people than any bad drug ever could. If

I'm not a libertarian, but it seems to me that making drug certification take 15 years and a billion dollars kills more people than any bad drug ever could. If you disagree, please point me to anyone, anywhere doing a cost-benefit analysis of preventing bad drugs vs discouraging new drugs, and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. From where I sit, it looks like these policies are over-cautious because deaths from bad drugs are much more visible to the public than deaths from non-existent drugs, even though the latter outnumber the former by far.

bryanlarsen 12y ago
A billion dollars buys you a 20 year government protected monopoly. It might not be the most efficient system, but there are certainly lots of people willing to finance that trade.
vacri 12y ago
I'm so tired of people arguing that drugs are only bad if people die from them. Why is something considered bad only if it has a body count? I guess thalidomide isn't an issue in your book, because even though people end up without limbs for life because of it, they're not dead so it doesn't count. and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. HOLY FUCK, what a MASSIVE rephrasing of what I said. You're going to need Mjolnir to force those words into my mouth. Where the fuck did I say the FDA system was optimal? I said comparing pharmaceuticals to video games and demanding that they have the same level of regulation is stupid. It's clear you have zero idea of what happens when pharmaceuticals go bad; anyone that talks of bad drugs only in terms of dead people really, really needs to educate themselves on the topic. The idea of doing that study you demand is nonsensical. I'm also not sure of why I'm the one who has to present it; if you want to change the status quo, you need to find your own references. And if you did actually know anything about pharma, you'd know that 'wonder drugs' pop up all the time, only to have crippling side effects found later in testing - sometimes the 'wonder drug' actually turns out to be horrific (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs has a few - and this is for released drugs). The problem is that "the feds won't release wonder drug X" is a better headline than "unreleased drug X has horrible side-effects, but they were found before the drug was okayed". It's also worth mentioning that pharma started out with 'video game' levels of regulation, and it was the life-altering errors that brought in regulation. TL;DR The FDA process may not be optimal, but they're a shitload better than no regulation.

bryanlarsen 12y ago

A billion dollars buys you a 20 year government protected monopoly. It might not be the most efficient system, but there are certainly lots of people willing to finance that trade.

vacri 12y ago

I'm so tired of people arguing that drugs are only bad if people die from them. Why is something considered bad only if it has a body count? I guess thalidomide isn't an issue in your book, because even though people end up without limbs for life because of it, they're not dead so it doesn't count. and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. HOLY FUCK, what a MASSIVE rephrasing of what I said. You're going to need Mjolnir to force those words into my mouth. Where the fuck did I say the FDA system was optimal? I said comparing pharmaceuticals to video games and demanding that they have the same level of regulation is stupid. It's clear you have zero idea of what happens when pharmaceuticals go bad; anyone that talks of bad drugs only in terms of dead people really, really needs to educate themselves on the topic. The idea of doing that study you demand is nonsensical. I'm also not sure of why I'm the one who has to present it; if you want to change the status quo, you need to find your own references. And if you did actually know anything about pharma, you'd know that 'wonder drugs' pop up all the time, only to have crippling side effects found later in testing - sometimes the 'wonder drug' actually turns out to be horrific (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs has a few - and this is for released drugs). The problem is that "the feds won't release wonder drug X" is a better headline than "unreleased drug X has horrible side-effects, but they were found before the drug was okayed". It's also worth mentioning that pharma started out with 'video game' levels of regulation, and it was the life-altering errors that brought in regulation. TL;DR The FDA process may not be optimal, but they're a shitload better than no regulation.