On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:55 PM, Michael Torrie <[email protected]> wrote: > Nicholas Leippe wrote:
>> http://www.emord.com/events/speeches/fda_violation.htm > > By the way this kind of link is far more convincing in support of your > claims than the blog post and WWN-wannabe news rag you linked to before. > I don't know about that. That final link is the keynote speech from a 'natural supplement' expo. Whatever you think of natural supplements, it's clear that those who stand to make a lot of money by promoting natural supplements as medicine have a bone to pick with the FDA, which insists that such claims actually have some experimental basis to them. The FDA is certainly broken to some degree, but it's an agency with an overly-broad scope and not enough funding to carry out its mission. I think the idea at the end of the article to reduce drug company influence on drug safety decisions is a great one, though the one to make the staffers personally responsible for the bad results of approved drugs is laughably stupid. It kind of puts things in perspective that they'd suggest making government people responsible before the ones who actually make and market bad drugs. I also have to wonder what people who call for dismantling of agencies like the FDA think would happen if the drug and supplement companies could simply say and do anything they pleased without any sort of regulatory bodies, even partially corrupt ones, regulating them? The free market idea depends on rational, well-informed beings, but advertising dollars are intended explicitly to subvert rational decision making, and with advances in understanding of human cognition, they are getting very effective. If they can bend the very visible and high-profile FDA to their will now, how much more so would they be able to bend the wills of various smaller and less visible entities if the FDA were disbanded entirely? --Levi /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
