How Regulation Kills Medical Innovation

IBD Editorials ^ | July 15, 2010 | HENRY I. MILLER

[Kaslin]

Economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has cited several reasons — including higher productivity, businesses' cost-cutting and a trend toward lower wages — that in the current "tepid" recovery "many people will lack the money needed to buy all the goods and services the economy can produce."

But he fails to mention another factor that will limit growth and job creation: Obama administration regulatory policies and day-to-day decision-making that are laying waste to the scientific and technological engines needed to fuel a robust recovery.

The granddaddy of them all is the EPA's decision to regulate CO2, which humans exhale with every breath and plants use as substrate for photosynthesis, as a "pollutant." The resulting regulations will affect companies' willingness to make new investments, profitability and very survival.

The EPA's potentially catastrophic treatment of CO2 has been greeted by high-profile congressional and public resistance but under the radar another ubiquitous federal agency, the FDA, has been killing innovation, companies and jobs in sectors — drugs, vaccines and medical devices — that have been among America's most successful for decades. (The FDA regulates products worth over $1 trillion annually.)

The agency has increased the amounts of data that will need to be obtained and submitted to regulators for medical devices — including pacemakers, artificial joints and cardiac stents — to an extent that threatens innovation in the industry, especially at a time when financing is hard to obtain. Device companies are moving abroad and even writing off the U.S. market for certain over-regulated products.

[saint]

Stop the ( Obama Chicago) machine!

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Dear reader, we are watching the decline of western medicine. Innovation is being put onto the back burner, as the old routines take over. May YHWH have mercy on us.

[Waco]

ALL mammals on earth CONSTANTLY emit CO2!!! Earth will be wipped out shortly, including the EPA!!

[exDemMom]

Actually, so do plants.

All aerobic organisms (plants included) constantly ingest oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants just happen to also use carbon dioxide as their primary carbon source.

[B4Ranch]

The purpose of the EPA is not to save the world from corporate polluters but to slowdown the US economy so that third world countries have a better chance in the world economy. The same thing with Agenda 21. It's purpose to adjust American society to UN standards for a One World Government.

[B4Ranch]

The purpose of the EPA is not to save the world from corporate polluters but to slowdown the US economy so that third world countries have a better chance in the world economy.

The same thing with Agenda 21. It's purpose to adjust American society expectations to UN standards for a One World Government.

IMO, that's what this recession/depression is all about. The reshaping of American citizens expectations of our OWG future.

[GailA]

I’ve posted a thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2553687/posts requesting a Socialized Medicine Forum topic so we can put all this stuff under 1 topic to make it easier to find and use. Please chime in.