Free Republic

This is the story of two drugs. The first, dexfenfluramine, was the active ingredient in the weight loss drug Redux. Although it was available in the U.S. and Canada for only about 18 months, it killed hundreds of people, and severely injured thousands more. The second is marijuana. Over the past several decades, tens of millions of people across North America have used this drug regularly. It has, as far as anybody knows, killed no one. Anyone interested in the politics of science should study the Food and Drug Administration's treatment of these two drugs. Redux was originally rejected for...

In the ongoing battle over the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes, the Food and Drug Administration has now shown that ideology can bend almost anything to its will. Last week, the FDA claimed that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of the drug - flatly contradicting a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine. That seems strange, given that the Institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency. Could one group of scientists be so far off as to come up with a completely incorrect reading of the medicinal...