[Pharmboy]

Well, the food inspection and the drug part of the FDA are separate, so I cannot speak at all about this aspect of their job. Although I am in the (evil) pharma industry, I often find myself in the position of actually defending the FDA...they have a REALLY hard job. Why?

Well, if they don't approve drugs fast enough, they are blamed for holding up medical advances; when they DO approve drugs after they've been tested in 4,000 or so patients (or even 2,000) and then after they are on the market 1 in 40,000 has a bad reaction, they are blamed! Sorry, but they cannot win...

[aposiopetic]

I agree that they can’t win. I used to say that they’re a 10-billion dollar outfit policing a trillion-dollar set of (as you noted) unrelated industries — from peanut butter to antidepressants to tongue depressors to erythropoietin to artificial hearts to cell phones. Who (in their right mind) can pull that off?