Posted on 01/06/2005 11:06:01 AM PST by Hank Kerchief
I wonder how often we do this? Is it just this time, because of the hge numbers?
I was going to give a good sum (for me) to the relief effort. After Bush gave $350 million I figured that I already gave through my taxes.
I pick this comment out because I have some personal experience in the health care industry. First, I'd love to see the author document how he came up with the number of "milllions of consumer deaths". Secondly, how he can assign them as the result of "unnecessarily stringent tests". Finally, is it then his contention that no lives have been saved though such tests having either disqualified druges from the market because they were either ineffectual or dangerous, or having caused the use of such drugs to be modified to minimize side effects that were discovered though the result of testing?
Then I guess the civil unrest from populous nations with distressed and overburdened economies from the tsunami destruction won't really ripple out to the US in the form of economic upheavels, immigration issues or mass recruitment by Islamofascists.
What a country if this "Two-Party Cartel" had these principles
Amen!
We would have a lot more money to donate if the government wasn't seizing half our wages for spending on the causes THEY want to support. What would you do with a 50% raise?
Does the author even mention that the US military was the single group most able to provide the most aid in the shortest amount of time? I suppose he thinks it was immoral to send our forces to Indonesia.
"Then I guess the civil unrest from populous nations with distressed and overburdened economies from the tsunami destruction won't really ripple out to the US in the form of economic upheavels, immigration issues or mass recruitment by Islamofascists."
Welcome to FR...
Anyway assuming you're not a troll, the area's economy is already distressed, no amount of government aid will solve that.
Immigration issues? The refuse of the third world already immigrate here at will any time they can to leech off the taxpayers, so this changes nothing.
Islamic recruitment? They are already recruiting as many killers as they can. Shoveling billions of US taxpayer dollars at them won't change this.
He would. But perhaps if the federal gov't were reimbursed by private charity, it wouldn't be so bad. I think in this case, given your point, an exception could be made to the principle of not supporting charity at the barrel of a gun.
I have to agree with the general premise of the evil of "coercive philanthropy". "A Christmas Carol" also makes the point quite well.
James Madison was quite clear on this. The Constitution does not authorize the expenditure of federal funds on benevolence, no matter how worthy the cause.
But, hey, it's a living document don't ya know.
I have just had the greatest idea ever.
1. Eliminate taxation deductions for charitable donations, except those
2. Voluntary contributions to The American Peoples Fund, which provides all funding for
3. US Government charitable assistance, which at any time is limited to
4. the actual amount of the APF reserve.
It would work.
Nobody gets what this fellow is saying anymore. We are so far down the road to socializm already that I often fear we'll never get back.
RonF: "First, I'd love to see the author document how he came up with the number of "milllions of consumer deaths". Secondly, how he can assign them as the result of "unnecessarily stringent tests". Finally, is it then his contention that no lives have been saved though such tests having either disqualified druges from the market because they were either ineffectual or dangerous, or having caused the use of such drugs to be modified to minimize side effects that were discovered though the result of testing?"
1. Let us say that the drug in question is a cancer drug. It takes perhaps 10-13 years on average for a drug to undergo the extensive tests the FDA requires of it before it can be marketed. In 10-13 years, how many people will die of even the particular brand of cancer that this drug, had it been marketed sooner, would have been able to treat successfully? While we can never attach an exact number on a hypothetical, it is reasonable to expect that, in this manner, millions of patients of common serious diseases will be affected.
2. Milton Friedman, in "Free to Choose," provided a wonderful explanation of the incentives that the FDA places on regulatory overseers to over-test rather than under-test, to be nitpicky about any remote possibility of the potential presence of side effects in a drug, because the overseer's name will be smeared with negative publicity if he allows the drug to pass the FDA's standards and, later, the drug happens to have had inadvertent side effects. If the drug does not happen to have such side effects, he will not be blamed, even if the delay caused by testing resulted in numerous deaths in the meantime. Thus, rather than just test where testing is reasonable and cost-efficient, the FDA mandates tests regarding every possible contingency, thus creating immense gaps between a the time a drug could feasibly be marketed and the time it actually is.
3. I am not denying the need for tests altogether. I am merely stating that these tests ought to be performed on the free market by individual companies, without any oversight agency setting standards on issues that it cannot have a better knowledge of than the company and the consumers themselves. Health care businesses ought to decide for themselves what degree of testing is necessary, and, if consumers agree with their choice, they will buy their products, thus rewarding competent choices.
I am
G. Stolyarov II
RonF: "First, I'd love to see the author document how he came up with the number of "milllions of consumer deaths". Secondly, how he can assign them as the result of "unnecessarily stringent tests". Finally, is it then his contention that no lives have been saved though such tests having either disqualified druges from the market because they were either ineffectual or dangerous, or having caused the use of such drugs to be modified to minimize side effects that were discovered though the result of testing?"
1. Let us say that the drug in question is a cancer drug. It takes perhaps 10-13 years on average for a drug to undergo the extensive tests the FDA requires of it before it can be marketed. In 10-13 years, how many people will die of even the particular brand of cancer that this drug, had it been marketed sooner, would have been able to treat successfully? While we can never attach an exact number on a hypothetical, it is reasonable to expect that, in this manner, millions of patients of common serious diseases will be affected.
2. Milton Friedman, in "Free to Choose," provided a wonderful explanation of the incentives that the FDA places on regulatory overseers to over-test rather than under-test, to be nitpicky about any remote possibility of the potential presence of side effects in a drug, because the overseer's name will be smeared with negative publicity if he allows the drug to pass the FDA's standards and, later, the drug happens to have had inadvertent side effects. If the drug does not happen to have such side effects, he will not be blamed, even if the delay caused by testing resulted in numerous deaths in the meantime. Thus, rather than just test where testing is reasonable and cost-efficient, the FDA mandates tests regarding every possible contingency, thus creating immense gaps between a the time a drug could feasibly be marketed and the time it actually is.
3. I am not denying the need for tests altogether. I am merely stating that these tests ought to be performed on the free market by individual companies, without any oversight agency setting standards on issues that it cannot have a better knowledge of than the company and the consumers themselves. Health care businesses ought to decide for themselves what degree of testing is necessary, and, if consumers agree with their choice, they will buy their products, thus rewarding competent choices.
I am
G. Stolyarov II
Surely you meant filosofer...
If there's a single drug in the pipeline that promises to have life-saving effect on millions of patients, it's not going to take 10 to 13 years to get through testing. These things get fast-tracked now. The vast majority of drugs are much more specific than this.
The other thing to consider is how many people have been saved because the testing protocols have eliminated drugs that were either ineffective (thus keeping patients from wasting time and money using drugs that don't work instead of ones that do) or harmful; cancer drugs are designed to kill cells, and testing often finds that while they kill cancer cells, they also kill healthy cells and their owners.
While I haven't read Milton Friedman's book, I'll stipulate that a regulator's career is more likely to suffer from under-testing than over-testing. And there have been efforts to fix that. However, I have an issue with this statement:
I am merely stating that these tests ought to be performed on the free market by individual companies, without any oversight agency setting standards on issues that it cannot have a better knowledge of than the company and the consumers themselves.
The free market also has it's incentives, and even with regulatory oversight they have historically often not operated in favor of the consumer. Corporate officers often tend to worry about short-term financial objectives and push a drug to market, fooling themselves that the long-term effects will be minimal or non-existent, or that they can destroy or bury the records of any problems. By the time that reality catches up, people have died. And I don't buy that consumers have more expertise in the health care issues surrounding new drugs undergoing testing than a regulatory agency filled with doctors, etc., that have specialized education and have run and reviewed numerous drug testing protocols and studies.
When I buy a car, I know something about cars. I know that companies that sell defective cars are likely to go out of business. I also know that if I buy a defective car I can get it fixed under warranty, and that my biggest problems will be loss of money and services.
When I buy a cancer drug I probably know little about cancer and almost nothing about how cancer drugs work in general or the specific drug in question. And it'll take me a while to get up to speed. And if the drug fails, I'll be dead and what happens to the company won't matter. The free market works macroscopically here, but you end up with dead people. Individually it poses a much different risk than buying a car.
RonF wrote: "If there's a single drug in the pipeline that promises to have life-saving effect on millions of patients, it's not going to take 10 to 13 years to get through testing. These things get fast-tracked now. The vast majority of drugs are much more specific than this."
MR. STOLYAROV: The best recent example of this NOT happening was ImClone's anti-cancer drug, Erbitrux, which, for months and years, the FDA threatened to not approve, but finally reneged on the threat. The threat itself, however, sparked a massive selling spree of ImClone stock and the entire unjustified Martha Stewart trial. As a result, ImClone's reputation has been so tarnished that it will not likely be able to market the drug effectively even though it now has FDA approval.
Moreover, is the life of every individual not significant? Just because a given drug treats a rare disease does not mean that the emergency situation faced by patients of said disease is any less imminent. A lot of them, especially patients of terminal diseases, would wish to be treated NOW, even if the drug has not been investigated as thoroughly as it could be, since to wait would mean to die. In a free market, they would be given that option, but, presently, the FDA decides that they ought to die in order to prod the drug for every conceivable side effect it could produce. To add to this, there are numerous rare diseases, and, even if their patients were the sole ones affected by the FDA (which is not true, by the way), the number would still add up to a considerable sum. I would, however, also argue that if the FDA's prohibitions on the marketing of drugs destroy at least one life, that organization is already immoral, just as a murderer who kills only one person is immoral.
RonF wrote: "The other thing to consider is how many people have been saved because the testing protocols have eliminated drugs that were either ineffective (thus keeping patients from wasting time and money using drugs that don't work instead of ones that do) or harmful; cancer drugs are designed to kill cells, and testing often finds that while they kill cancer cells, they also kill healthy cells and their owners."
MR. STOLYAROV: Still, I contend that the company who releases such drugs on the market without ruling out such harmful possibilities will quickly lose customership. On the free market, however, there is most often a deterrent effect that prevents companies from making such errors before the fact. The very fear of losing customership often in itself stimulates companies to tread carefully, but not *obsessively*, before releasing the new drug.
In some cases, like those of terminally ill patients, however, the customer would *want* access to an incomplete drug as a lesser evil than no drug at all. The government should not prohibit these people from trying to save their lives.
RonF: "Corporate officers often tend to worry about short-term financial objectives and push a drug to market, fooling themselves that the long-term effects will be minimal or non-existent, or that they can destroy or bury the records of any problems."
MR. STOLYAROV: Simply put, the corporate officers who do so tend to lose customers and profits. They fail more often than those who can plan for the long term and see the entire consequences of their decisions. The best entrepreneurs in history, such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, were able to see decades and perhaps even centuries into the future in order to chart the courses they set for themselves. They repeatedly outperformed the less prudent businessmen. The free market cannot guarantee corporate competence, but it provides an *incentive* for such competence to exist; he who has it will outcompete him who has it not. Thus, having it is desired by many.
RonF: "When I buy a cancer drug I probably know little about cancer and almost nothing about how cancer drugs work in general or the specific drug in question. And it'll take me a while to get up to speed. And if the drug fails, I'll be dead and what happens to the company won't matter. The free market works macroscopically here, but you end up with dead people. Individually it poses a much different risk than buying a car."
MR. STOLYAROV: If you are not allowed to buy the drug by the FDA, you are far more likely to be dead as well, since cancers almost never cure themselves. Thus, the risk on the free market is far smaller, especially if the company is doing its best to *prevent* consumer deaths so as not to spoil its relations with customers and the public.
I am
G. Stolyarov II
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