Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
Posted on 06/08/2005 6:37:39 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Last week, I wrote about a federal agency that most people think is indispensable. In reality, I said, the FDA regulates us to death, literally, by forbidding even dying Americans who can't be helped by established medical treatments from trying innovative therapies.
But what's the alternative? Have no oversight? Let any company peddle every dubious medicine to an unsuspecting public? That sounds terrifying. Snake-oil sellers would sell all kinds of harmful stuff. That's why we created the FDA in the first place.
Why must we give big government so much power? Couldn't FDA scrutiny be voluntary and advisory? Companies that want government blessing would go through the whole process and, after 10 or 15 years, get the FDA's seal of approval. Those of us who are cautious would take only FDA-approved drugs.
But if you had a terminal illness, you could try something that might save your life. You could try it without having to wait 15 years — without having to break your country's laws to import it illegally from Europe — without sneaking into Mexico to experiment in some dubious clinic. If I'm dying, shouldn't my government allow me the right to try whatever I want?
If FDA scrutiny were voluntary, the government agency would soon have competition. Private groups like Consumer Reports and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) might step in to compete with the FDA.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
As a pharmacuetical company employee, I can subscribe to this notion.
I have been saying this for years. Let a UL like set of companies do the testing cheaper.
The FDA sucks.
Anyone remember Thalidomide?
Yes. An independent UL-like company can do the testing. This company can be set up by Insurers (Underwriters), just like how UL was set up. After all - the underwriters would have a vested interest in keeping their expenses low - which are claims from injured parties.
But that is the case of a company corrupting the FDA to get it to pass their muster. Today there are many, many example of price-gouging of drugs by the companies. They have good hold on the FDA. It is a thoroughly corrupt agency now! It needs to go!
The FDA is what Big Pharma uses to control health care. Before the AMA and Big Pharma got together we had good health care.
If you want not to be the victim for cut, burn or poison you have to have the funds to get out of the country for the most part.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Yes! It is finally approved in the US and being used with great success for certain cancers, for some AIDS related problems, and for a wide variety of other severe diseases for which their previously was no effective treatment. It should have been approved a decade earlier. So long as the mandatory military grade paperwork program can dodge the obvious issue of pregnancy, the drug is fairly safe if you are willing to gradually exchange your prior problem for a sensory neurapathy. With drug approval there has been a surge in research trying to find similar drugs with fewer side effects. FDA bragged about stopping it for years as loudly as the 'Rats bragged about FDR 'ending' the Great Depression. What really happened was they were so slow reviewing it's then known side effects that somebody else finally discovered the famous limb reduction side effects.
I have a lengthy and growing list of drugs that the FDA has either removed from the market or never let on the market that would help many of my patients. Many were or would have been more effective, cheaper and relatively safer than the treatments used in their absence. Several are widely used in most of the world with significant reports of problems. Their latest ploy is to try to scare parents away from using Elidel or Protopic on children with eczema even there is essentially no data to support the alleged risks according to all the real experts. As a result I waste lots of time reassuring parents that I know more the FDA and its media on the subject. As a group my eczema patients are doing much better since these drugs became available and IMHO about their only side effect is their cost. I heartily endorse Stossel's proposal.
http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/thalidomide.htm
Thalidomide (tha-lid-o-mide) was first marketed in Europe in the late 1950's. It was used as a sleeping pill and to treat morning sickness during pregnancy. At that time no one knew thalidomide caused birth defects.
Thalidomide is not approved for general sale in the United States. However, the Food and Drug Administration allows it to be used in studies (such as this one). These are studies of certain severe or life threatening diseases where there may be no other treatment.
http://www.thalidomide.ca/
Canada didn't have the FDA.
You mean the stuff recently discovered to be a cure for leprosy?
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
"In Europe, a drug called thalidomide was marketed as a tranquilizer. In America, the FDA official in charge of the American "new drug application" for thalidomide (Nov., 1960) was a woman physician (Francis Kelsey, M.D.) whose physician/pharmacist husband did not like the way routine pharmacologic tests had been done on thalidomide. Dr. Kelsey was also concerned about some medical reports in late 1960 that thalidomide might cause neuropathy in some of its users. Neither of these concerns was fatal for the thalidomide application, but together they were enough to hold up the FDA's approval of thalidomide for a year. Since neither problem had anything to do with birth defects, it was only by the sheerest chance that the red-tape in these matters caused introduction of thalidomide to be delayed in the U.S. until it began to be suggested in late 1961 that thalidomide was a dangerous drug for pregnant women. In the end, the association between thalidomide and birth defects was discovered in Europe, not America -- and certainly was not discovered by the FDA."-- The Right Lesson To Learn From Thalidomide
I also remember beta blockers which were held up for years, causing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from heart disease.
I have long advocated establishing an Underwriters' Laboratories (owned and run by and for insurance companies) for drugs and other medicines. I've had to engineer products to meet UL's exacting standards, and believe me, they are COMPLETELY untouchable by bribes or political pressure, TOTALLY UNLIKE the politician-and-big-pharma-dominated FDA board. As a result, electrocutions per 100,000 have dropped to virtually NONE, while deaths from LEGAL FDA-approved drugs are in the 100,000+/year range.
Also: See THIS POSTand THIS WEB PAGE
Bump to that, and your tagline. Nice!
Actually Thalidomide doesn't treat the leprosy infection directly, instead it blocks one severely destructive allergic reaction which can rarely develop to the infection. That is hardly a recent discovery. It was serendipitously discovered in Israel in the 1960s AFTER the worldwide ban on the drug had started.
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