Are you sure? Thalidomide, melamine, Baycol. Just to name three substances FDA has banned or has banned products for containing.
Every now and then they earn their keep. Otherwise, how would you induce the proprietor of a trade name and a profitable product that is lawful to sell, to withdraw his product from the market when he makes his living from it? He will throw every nickel he makes at you in the form of legal pettifogging, Philadelphia lawyering, and just plain vituperation in the press. You ready to stand up to all that, just because his product harms people?
Quackery is just market based innovation. If we want people to take responsibility for their lives, you have to let them take risks. Why not allow the market to create a UL for pharmaceuticals and food products?
The insurer has a great interest in not being sued to death. The FDA doesn’t catch everything and is subject to regulatory capture. Currently, drug companies don’t need to disclose their testing, just the results. How is that good? Government should just be interested in transparency.
Doctors have long prescribed off schedule use of drugs to the benefit of their patients. Even the placebo effect is real. Let’s compare another government protection agency, the TSA.
They’ve just reported that they stopped 2200 handguns from getting on flights. Did they really protect us or is it a false premise to begin with? We don’t want stopped-clock agencies because they ruin liberty.
Thalidomide is still used and useful. Melamine is also still used and useful. Take a look at the toxicity levels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine#Toxicity
Why was it reduced by the FDA to a fraction of what it had been and much lower than Canada or the EU? Is it because our FDA loves us so much? Government is political by nature and think of all the reasons for government action that aren’t beneficent.
As for Baycol, postmarketing monitoring discovered the issue. Certainly you’re not arguing that Bayer intentionally introduced a drug they knew would kill?