Free Republic

Regulations: An easy way to tell whether one of Donald Trump's leadership picks is a good one is to gauge the freakout level among the left. By that measure alone, the person Trump is considering as head of the Food and Drug Administration would be an outstanding choice. Jim O'Neill, whose name got floated this week, is a managing director at of Trump pal Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital Management. In addition to private sector experience, O'Neill worked at the Department of Health and Human Services under President Bush. But he's also — gasp! — a libertarian! Thus, we're seeing headlines...

WASHINGTON—Passage of legislation aimed at speeding up Food and Drug Administration approvals, combined with an incoming president who has pledged to “cut red tape” at the agency, is expected to usher in a new, more industry-friendly era of drug and device regulation. The Senate on Wednesday cleared the measure known as the 21st Century Cures bill, which lays out in detail speedier and more pro-industry methods for the FDA to approve new drugs and medical devices. Its supporters, such as PhRMA, the drug-industry association, and AdvaMed, representing device makers, praise it as a way to bring about more innovation and...

<p>Theranos, the biotech company started by a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, has another hurdle to cross in its whole "we're totally a legit blood-testing company" campaign. This time, it turns out that tens of thousands of blood tests were voided, making them totally invalid. Whoops!</p>

We haven't really written much about the insane Theranos scandal, though we discussed it on our podcast. The whole story is pretty crazy -- involving a heavily hyped up company that appeared to basically be flat out lying to everyone about what it could do. The company still exists, but barely. The company's founder and CEO, who was plastered across magazine covers and compared frequently to Steve Jobs, has been banned from running a lab for two years, and the company is now facing a $140 million lawsuit from its biggest partner, Walgreens, who claims that Theranos repeatedly lied to...

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

It's worth asking why Elizabeth Holmes is still leading the embattled blood testing company Theranos Inc. But there may be a good reason why she still is in charge, one that has little to do with the scandal-ridden company's performance to date. Forget what venture capitalist Tim Draper — one of the first to invest in the Palo Alto company — implied this week that Holmes is being attacked because she's a young, female entrepreneur. The simple fact is that Theranos has not been able to deliver on its technology from a commercial, scientific or regulatory standpoint, and that falls...

2016 has not been too kind to Elizabeth Holmes, the Steve-Jobs wannabe in charge of fraudulent Theranos. She has thus far been banned for 2 years from operating labs, removed from hosting fundraisers for Hillary and lost her entire net worth. And now, the Wall Street Journal has published the "tell-all" story of the whistle-blower, 26 year old Tyler Shultz, who brought the the whole Theranos farce crashing down. It's a sordid tale complete with all the expected twists and turns of a Jason Bourne thriller including intimidation, coercion and private detectives. Tyler Shultz is the grandson of George Shultz,...

I am frankly shocked this information is not making front page news right now. Monsanto will do anything to bury this story… and as of right now, it’s working. Not a single mainstream media outlet has covered this appalling new report that shows millions of people being poisoned by a chemical that does not belong in our food. This chemical is ending up in processed foods like Cheerios, Ritz Crackers, and Oreos and being consumed by humans across the world. The health of millions of people is on the line and this news must go mainstream! That’s why I’m calling on every single one of you...

...In August a new FDA rule went into effect that forbids tobacco makers and distributors from handing out free samples. Some companies that have been donating cigars to service members for decades have now stopped for fear that this is now illegal... California Republican Duncan Hunter, who did combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming a Marine reservist, says legislation shouldn’t be needed. In a Sept. 8 letter, he asked FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to clarify if the new rule really does ban cigar donations to soldiers. He’s still waiting to hear back.... The FDA’s bureaucrats are happy to...

Despite what many people think the left-liberal coalition’s decision to base so much of its effort on keeping the government out of our bedrooms is, long term, a losing strategy. Conservatives have a slight advantage where these issues are the only ones considered by people when deciding how to vote. If they could redirect their efforts to keeping government out of the kitchen they might have something. Uncle Sam has decided what we eat and drink is somehow his business. The government says it wants to bend the healthcare cost curve downward but really this is just another version of...

New Food and Drug Administration regulations on cigars, e-cigarettes and other products that took effect Aug. 8. Among the regulations is what many interpret as a ban on the charitable donation of tobacco products.

Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton urged Mylan to voluntarily slash the prices of its products while promising that, once she’s elected, her “plan to address exorbitant drug price hikes like these” will be finally implemented. This is a particularly empty promise considering Mylan has donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which was recently revealed to be peddling influence in exchange for cash. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) are also pressuring the manufacturer to disclose more about its pricing. Even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) — whose own daughter, Heather Bresch, serves as Mylan’s CEO — weighed...

We have been following the latest melodrama involving a "greedy" Mylan, and numerous "humanistic" US politicians, all the way up to the Democratic presidential candidate, exchange blows over the company's dramatic price increases of its EpiPen anti-allergy medication, with a healthy dose of amusement for one simple reason: if Congress wants to crack down on someone, it should crack down on itself. After all, the only reason Mylan has been able to pass the kinds of price increases that Congress is now blasting it for, is because of US laws and regulations; laws which incidentally, have been determined in Washington's...

There’s a new bout of outrage over an expensive medicine or medical treatment. While the good in question changes each time, the blame always seems to fall on greedy corporations who just aren’t regulated enough. Free markets and capitalism are the scapegoat, even when nothing remotely resembling unhampered markets in health care is in place in the United States. This time, it’s the EpiPen, a device that easily and safely injects epinephrine to quickly open up airways for people undergoing severe anaphylaxis because of an extreme allergy. It has saved the lives of countless people who are allergic to bee...

The sale of e-cigarettes to minors will be banned starting Monday, as part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's long-awaited plan to extend the agency's regulatory powers across all tobacco products. The new rules halt the sale of e-cigarettes and any other tobacco product to anyone younger than 18. The regulations also require photo IDs to buy e-cigarettes, and ban retailers from handing out free samples or selling them in all-ages vending machines. The rules also cover other alternative forms of tobacco like cigars, hookah tobacco and pipe tobacco. Electronic cigarettes are battery-operated devices designed to create an aerosol...

By Up to three-quarters of American adults take some kind of vitamin or supplement, so there's a pretty good chance you're one of them. That's a lot of people purchasing substances that aren't evaluated by the FDA, and for the most part don't work. What's more, vitamins and supplements are only getting more popular, with sales growing 50% faster than those of over-the-counter drugs over the past several years. Basically, most of you are throwing money away on magical beans -- stop it already! There's not a whole lot of regulation, which is good for sales pitches One of the...

Every person, regardless of race, creed, or country, is born into the world with certain natural rights, including the right to live, the Second Continental Congress declared 240 years go this July 4. From the right to life, surely one can infer a right to try to extend oneÂ’s own life and improve its quality. For this reason, all 13 states that declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, and simultaneously declared unalienable each personÂ’s rights to life and liberty, either have passed or are considering passing legislation expanding the freedom of terminally ill patients to try to survive. Five...

Cronyism is the ugly marriage between special interest groups and politicians, which results in an abuse of the government's power to grant special privileges to a few winners -- for example, unfairly preventing competition or doling out subsidies and bailouts at the expense of taxpayers. Though cronyism is always outrageous, the way cronies go about achieving their goals is sometimes oddly funny. Case in point: the government's changing the definition of catfish to classify the fish as -- wait for it -- meat, not seafood. As Patrick Mustain reports in Scientific American, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., included an amendment in...

Visium Asset Management, a multibillion dollar hedge fund, has imploded in the biggest scandal to hit the industry in years. The fund told investors of its plan to close in a letter Friday. It’s the most high-profile shutdown since authorities forced Steve Cohen’s controversial SAC Capital to close in 2013. A slew of factors — from a brewing insider-trading scandal to a contentious investment by Visium’s founder that rankled investors and staffers alike — led to Visium’s demise. On top of all of that, Visium’s flagship fund had been reporting dismal performance. Visium is selling one of its better performing...