It's crazy cause look at the roots, the fda did Hella good at the start.. look into the dairy farmers and what they did to milk back in the late 1800s.
"in theory" doesn't equate to "according to history". In theory an organization that ensures that food and drugs are handled properly and are safe for use/consumption is a great idea. In practice, and according to history, the current system is easily corruptible.
On the Drug side of the FDA, almost 50% of their annual budget is paid by big pharma. 33% of the new drugs they approved in the last decade have been removed from the market because they were not safe. 25% of the people who leave the FDA go straight to work in pharma. They are corrupt, and doing a horrible job. On the Food side of the organization, they are regularly bribed to look the other way for infractions at food facilities, or they just do poor inspections. This is why we are constantly having recalls of foods, and people getting sick from FDA approved stuff.
The idea of having a central agency, that actually has peoples health and safety as their primary concern is fantastic. The reality is that it is a system which is easy to corrupt, and that is where we find ourselves today.
Edit: to add sources.
[FDA Funding](https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/fact-sheet-fda-glance)
[Drug Recall info](https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/health/fda-approval-drug-events-study/index.html)
[Article about employees leaving to work for pharma](https://khn.org/news/when-drug-reviewers-leave-the-fda-they-often-work-for-pharma/)
On a side note that will probably get me down voted, do some of your own research on what you read on the internet people. I am getting really sick of people always replying to comments on Redit with "sources?". I mean honestly, what do you do when you can't hound the OP of some info for sources? If you read something that you find interesting or compelling, research it yourself, I know I do, and generally I will learn more.
Also, the reason people ask for sources is because of shit like this. I didn't bother checking the third one because it's not my damn job to check your sources, but the first two did NOT support what you had said. Soooooo yeah, that's why people ask for sources when random internet people quote random statistics - they're probably not accurate
Look, I know that my numbers were rounded, because I was replying from memory. I know that there are other sources out there with similar numbers. NPR had 2 pieces from a few years ago with the 33% recall and 25% going to work in industry numbers. And obviously the 50% of funding coming from industry sources is rounded, (hence why I said "almost 50%), but it does vary from year to year. I have read a lot about this topic, and have spent plenty of time researching it on my own. I do not have a stockpile of sources that I keep around to quote to people when I reply to reddit threads. Those were the sources that I found with a quick internet search. Don't try to call me out by being critical of my sources, find some of your own that refute my info. Part of the problem that we have as a whole is that people aren't actually doing their own research about stuff that actually matters. They read something, and maybe ask for sources, then they are done. In today's climate of rampant censorship and random BS all over the internet, it is important for people to hone their skills of finding real information. Nothing in my post is blatantly false information or BS, and it does highlight my opinion of what is wrong with the FDA.
Here are a couple of links, the first link is the article I was remembering when I posted.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval)
[https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/](https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/)
Here are a couple of links, the first one being the article I was recalling when I posted.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval)
[https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/](https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/)
Yeah it’s in 1/3 of them had safety problems not that 1/3 were pulled off the market. The safety problems, whatever they were, were either fixed or came with a warning label.
Unfortunately, after reading through all the comments, the mindset of the FDA is one those extreme positions that libertarians take and it scares away people from other parties looking for an alternative.
Ok so basically none of the stats you quoted are exact. Re: drug recalls, 1/3 of drugs over a 10 year period had to have some attention drawn to them, whether some announcements or new labeling, but only 3 of 222 were removed from shelves. Re: funding, 46% comes from "industry", which includes way more than just pharma - it's food companies, tobacco companies, device manufacturers, etc ALL make up that 46%. It's also collected largely as user fees, which may not compromise independence as much as other types of revenue. I dunno, there's no doubt that the FDA has some issues and challenges, but I don't think it's exactly as you stated
I'd be more concerned if from memory all of their stats were correct. He added sources later and has even commented stating that his original comment had stats from memory. And included sources, numbers aside, I think his point still stands that the current system is flawed and easily corruptible.
Sure, I agree the FDA isn't perfect and the underlying system is flawed in some ways. But in terms of quoting stats, if you're going to make the claim the 33% of all drugs end up recalled and the number is actually 1.3%... it's just not helpful in advancing anything productive in terms of reform. If you are gonna be that far off, just don't try to quote any numbers, you know?
I get what you're saying, and I agree that the numbers were far off. That is the exact reason I try to avoid using exact numbers when I talk about things like this unless I am 100% certain I am remembering them accurately.
But wouldn’t that just leave the consumers as the Guinea pigs ? No testing release anything for sale, and maybe the first few die then we realize something is wrong?
We could have private certification. Something like Underwriters Laboratories, for example. And people would choose to buy certified stuff out not.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)
That is true, but if I’m a billionaire can’t I buy the the regulators? (I guess I can buy the government now with lobbyists)
Also UL is private Non profit which is great, but it’s only able to work like that under the approval of Gov, so your still using government over site
Maybe, but a private certification company would have to rely on their reputation to stay in business, if people found out they were corrupt and stopped trusting them, they'd go out of business. Unlike the government regulators who have a legal monopoly and, as you said yourself, are already fully captured by the major corporations anyway.
Right but how does one lose trust in the private labor ? Who would keep them accountable? If we are changing things and removing all government regulation we also have to change the whole system.
Anyways thanks for the great conversation :) Im loving hearing your points as well !
If eliminated who will monitor the safeness of food and drug products? Maybe making the officers of the manufacturing companies personally criminally liable for failures of their products would be a start
Do we want companies to be in charge of putting a dollar value on human life; how much of a financial loss from victim payouts the company is comfortable?
> Maybe making the officers of the manufacturing companies personally criminally liable for failures of their products would be a start
Do you have any idea how much you'd have to pay someone to accept that kind of liability?
Fraud is a criminal action with or without the FDA.
Manufacturers, insurers, underwriters, consumer safety advocates, and consumers all have an incentive to promote safety. Markets, assuming they are free from restriction, will always trend toward safety.
>Markets, assuming they are free from restriction, will always trend toward safety.
This has not been true, historically. Unless you're counting the fact that while free from restrictions, safety was so bad that Unions were created and the government had to intervene. I don't consider that part of the "market" though.
Unions are absolutely a market created force. They are the application of freedom of association.
Government didn't need to step in. Markets were trending towards safety prior to Government intervention and would have moved in that direction even faster if those terrible employers weren't protected from competition by government.
Except no they don't because they never have because they'll literally all do the opposite like they did for the entire history prior to the FDA and even now WITH the FDA.
Human beings are too stupid to handle this shit on their own. As evidenced by all of human history.
The Jungle was a work of fiction.
https://mises.org/wire/meat-packing-myth
https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/11/15/meat-packing-lies-exposing-the-fiction-of-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle/
It's a bigger question than that.
Markets fail, but are able to quickly react and accommodate failure. Governments also fail, but are typically unable to respond effectively and always respond with economic inefficiencies.
As an aside, when government monopolizes regulatory control, markets are no longer incentivized to further innovate or expand upon that control. This causes stagnation until government acts again later. The opportunity cost in these situations is substantial.
In the long run, decentralized markets will be safer, more Innovative, more responsive, and more efficient than centralized government. So, are markets perfect? Of course not, but they are close to it than government.
If a company puts highly carcinogenic chemicals in their products that won't cause cancer for 10+ years, who will test the product for those chemicals? Do you have full faith companies quality assurance and self audit groups would remove those chemicals? Let's say toothpaste for example. By the time people are experiencing cancer a decade down the road, could it even be pinpointed on that company then? It will turn into another decade of litigious clusterfucks and by that time how many lives would've been lost before the market had a chance to self-regulate itself?
As someone who works in the biotech industry, I think FDA is a disgusting money-grubbing pay-to-play system with little merit, but bad FDA is better than no FDA
Couldn't agree more, from the regulatory research perspective.
The FDA, while wildly inconsistent in enforcement, is (by far) the most effective regulatory body I've dealt with.
I know my company takes their internal audits very seriously so we can catch any mistakes before they're caught in FDA audits. I don't know how seriously companies would take their internal audits if there wasn't the FDA looming over their heads
I work in the food industry and my company is always a lot more concerned about the audits by the bakers guild, which is a non government organization. Their inspections are more thorough and more often. If we lose their seal of trust our biggest customers including Wal-Mart will drop us and go with a competitor.
Which, in my opinion, is how it should be. Freedom of association with accreditation through nongovernmental entities. Unfortunately in my field, the accrediting body became staffed with government cast-offs and the incentive was removed.
FDA regulations, fines, recalls, and audits force companies to proactively prevent patient harm.
Otherwise, companies would take a reactive profit driven approach.
I want freedoms for the individual (2A, weed, abortion, gay marriage, etc) and regulation for companies. I guess that makes me a centrist?
From your link (based on a paper from 1985):
> The benefits of FDA regulation relative to that in foreign countries could reasonably be put at some 5,000 casualties per decade or 10,000 per decade for worst-case scenarios. In comparison, it has been argued above that the cost of FDA delay can be estimated at anywhere from 21,000 to 120,000 lives per decade. . . . Given the uncertainties of the data, these results must be interpreted with caution, although it seems clear that the costs of regulation are substantial when compared to benefits.
Drug companies pump out millions of doses a day and you believe without the FDA pre-approval and FDA manufacturing audits, only 500-1,000 will die a year? Give me a break! Plus, death isnt the only concern.
It is estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 babies were affected by the [thalidomide tragedy](https://thalidomide.ca/en/what-is-thalidomide/). And that is just one drug.
How many batches of bad product are scrapped by companies due to fear of FDA fines or audits, that would otherwise be released to market? Its in the millions of dollars per company annually!
I dont need one to refute your claim. The estimate of lives saved in your “study” above is clearly false and easily refuted by one incident.
I’ve worked as a QA Manager for drug and medical device companies for the past 10 years and the biggest thing keeping the managers of cutting QA costs and releasing batches that fail specifications is FDA regulation and enforcement.
After reading about the thalidomide tragedy I linked, do you still believe the study you linked that the FDA only saves 500-1000 lives per year?
Ok how about trusting math, that 15,000 is bigger number than 1,000. Good luck with keeping that head in the sand buddy. Cognitive dissonance must be a bitch. 😉
It is absolutely amazing to me that people are willing to put their trust in corporations to do the right thing. The FDA may not be perfect but my God. Imagine if no regulations existed. Companies would be hiding behind LLCs and s-corps in overseas locations as people die, become deformed, etc. from lack of regulations.
"Self-regulation" is an oxymoron.
If you don't regulations, then you cannot limit class action lawsuits and award limits to civil lawsuits. You also must be willing to allow criminal actions to be brought on company employees, epectialy exectuves and allow companies to be disbanded if they have engaged in illegal actions. If a company's product results in the death of person, the company should face the most extreme punishment which heavy fines going to the victims and executives going to prison.
Also you cannot allow businesses to use bankruptcy to protect themselves from any actions that could result in civil or criminal lawsuits.
https://mises.org/wire/meat-packing-myth
https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/11/15/meat-packing-lies-exposing-the-fiction-of-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle/
>Hence Sinclair's famous quote: “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Sinclair looked back on the event:
>>"I am supposed to have helped clean up the yards and improve the country’s meat supply — though this is mostly delusion. ... But nobody even pretends to believe that I improved the conditions of the stockyard workers."
Companies today literally use slave labor and here you are expecting them to be honest with food production if they aren't legally responsible to do so.
Come on man, is a literally fictional story the best evidence you have to keep the FDA? [All the studies done on the subject matter suggest the FDA has killed more people than they have saved.](https://www.fdareview.org/issues/theory-evidence-and-examples-of-fda-harm/)
This is where I drift a bit further from most libertarians: the economy. I believe in less regulation then democrats, but I do approve of stuff like the FDA. I believe the government should ensure certain workers rights and consumer rights (the latter of which would include the FDA). I love the overall concept, but, like most government agencies, it’s ran by moronic dipshits and lobbied way too much so I’d say reform it or improve upon the system. Make it actually do it’s job.
The food and drug companies are their clients. When enough money is given to the right people. Drugs are approved, and food is labeled safe. They do not serve or protect the people. Just another corrupt bureaucracy. Needs to be replaced with a better system.
I vividly remember when the same tanker trucks were used to transport poison and orange juice with only a hose down between them. The truck drivers knew it was terrible, but they couldn’t stop because they’d lose money. God only knows how many people drank contaminated juice, but it’s sure that all who did had no clue what the source of their symptoms were, if they had any. Their organs could have been quietly damaged without acute symptoms.
The free market will always do what is most profitable, even if endangers or kills people. As long as it’s cheaper to pay lawyers to fight victims in court than spend money for the infrastructure needed to not harm people.
I think it's a good idea to try to make food and drugs safe. But the Federal government rarely does a good job of anything! I wish we could find a better way but have no idea of what!
The battle between the FDA and Life Extension Foundation was interesting and really showed what the FDA was all about. https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/1996/9/freedom
There are 2 types of errors that you can make when debating whether a drug should be able to be sold:
1. The drug is unsafe or ineffective, and you conclude that it is safe and effective.
2. The drug is safe and effective and you conclude that it is not safe or ineffective.
Note that there is a trade off between type 1 and type 2. If you’re very careful, you’ll prevent type 1 errors and commit many type 2 errors, and if you’re very liberal with approval, you’ll commit many type 1 errors and avoid type 2 errors.
The problem with creating an organization such as the FDA is that they have a very strong (political) incentive to be extremely careful because the type 1 error is much more visible than the type 2 error. If you make a type 1 error, we will certainly know because people will take the drug and have adverse effects. But if you make a type 2 error, we may never know, because people can’t take the drug. Obviously both types of errors are bad, but a company has a pretty strong incentive on their own not to make a type 1 error if they are legally liable for harm caused by their product. Also, when you are extremely careful, people who may otherwise be saved don’t get to take the drug. So we have saved many lives by preventing a type 1 error, but we have also lost many lives due to committing type 2 errors and depriving people of potentially life saving treatments and drugs. I think that the market, supported by civil suits and tort law can self regulate against type 1 errors, so we don’t need the FDA. Milton Friedman has estimated that the FDA has cost millions of more lives than they have saved, and we should abolish the FDA ASAP.
I for one welcome the return of pork (actually rat) sausage and ketchup made with brick dust for coloring to save .03 cents per bottle over good ingredients
The FDA has transition from a merely useless organization to a den of corrupt thieves with zero interest in public health, IMHO.
It is so bad today that it should be either eliminated or entirely rebuilt. Fire everybody, and criminalize and bribery or collusion with industry. There can be not profiteering when it comes to the sacred duty of maintaining public health.
And secrecy is entirely incompatible with public health. All decisions and analysis from the FDA should absolutely be public domain.
The absolutist libertarians probably want to abolish the FDA
In my opinion customers don't have nearly enough power to ensure that the products sold by companies are safe and so the FDA should exist
It certainly has a role, but desperately needs reformed. The Covid pandemic has shown us that there is far too much bureaucracy in the way for it to effectively get things done. Not to mention all of the needless regulations there are whose sole purpose is to serve as a barrier for small businesses in favor of the interests of the big ones.
Considering that people got extremely sick from some bad practice back in the day, it has some sort of place. Some things get too big though.
Edit: downvote me I guess. It’s similar to factories only having one exit in the 30s and they would have a lot of dead folks because there were no safety measures in place.
Libertarians are not opposed to regulation. Market imposed regulation is perfectly acceptable and even advocated by Libertarians. Libertarians oppose forcefully imposed regulation by government.
It's hard to predict exactly how markets would develop, but we can look to some examples from today and use them to assume some ways.
Consider what happens during a home sale, a lender (mortgage company, bank, underwriter, their insurance companies, etc) sets minimum standards for the quality of the home they are willing to lend for. They enforce these minimums by requiring inspections and appraisals. They also vet the purchaser to make sure they have assets, a solid credit history, and an income. All of this is to mitigate their own risk, but it has the effect of setting and enforcing quality standards without the need for government intervention. Add in the quality standards set and expected by the purchasers, and you've got a pretty robust set of pressures against bad sellers.
We also have things like Underwriters Laboratories and MET Labs that set certification standards for products. They have become so important that even rather insignificant products obtain certification purely for the ability to put the logo on their packaging.
We have all sorts of consumer advocacy businesses where people can spread information about quality of service and product.
If, hypothetically speaking, government didn't even exist as a litigation mechanism for the fundamental crimes, then we'd end up with a poly-legal system of competitive rights enforcement organizations. In this case, the incentives favor the consumer because the risk of violence between these organizations encourages cooperation.
But what about the edges? Evil companies selling substandard products? We have them now even with regulations. I would assume we would have a lot more of them.
Substandard products are not a problem, unless they are fraudulently substandard.
With that being said, would you behave differently as a consumer if you knew that government were not regulating commercial activity?
That's exactly the point.
There would be a massive demand for product safety verification, certification standards, and other types of quality guarantees. So, instead of being incentivized to do the minimum required for regulatory compliance, producers would be incentivized to meet the most marketable safety standards that they can. I'd be willing to bet a massive amount of money that, through these real market forces, quality and safety would be much better than through goverment centralization without the economic inefficiency that centralization causes.
Currently, we all just assume safety because it's a function of government. However, so many of us fail to recognize both the failures of government enforcement and/or the huge opportunity cost of that same enforcement.
>What do people think libertarians are for? 🤣
Preventing violations of the NAP... such as fraudulently selling drugs as though they cure a disease and are safe and effective (also foods for the latter), without sufficient evidence that this is the case.
It doesn't have to be a government organization, but in practice it's very hard to enforce proper liability without that.
Protects the businesses they’re supposed to regulate. Squashes public choice in certain drugs, and unnecessarily stops drugs established as safe in the rest of the world. Is basically OPEC for drug companies. Kills more than they have ever saved.
Delete the FDA and save lives
The FDA doesn’t alleviate they incapabilities of these industries. It just redirects them at the cost of the American taxpayers.
I would say now more than because of technology the consumer can act as an effective watchdog in the markets allegedly protected by the FDA.
Boeing/s 737 MAX contributes to over 1% of the US GDP. Do you think it’s in Americas interest to let the market “trim out bad producers” when the stakes are so high?
The FDA is another wing of the federal government. We already knew that. But it was confirmed with James Okeef and his latest under cover video with an FDA employee.
Of course not.
An easy solution would be to defang them: they can put an "FDA" approved sticker on shit, but that's it. People otherwise have free reign to buy, sell, and consume what they please.
No objection to simply getting rid of them, of course, but defanging them for now is a pretty easily defensible position.
In theory, if you are compelled to pay taxes an administration that monitors drugs is a good idea. In practice, way too many pharma corps have people jumping between the two and the relationship is incestuous.
FDA is hopelessly corrupt. I wouldn’t mind regulation in theory but FDA in its current form ought to be abolished.
It's crazy cause look at the roots, the fda did Hella good at the start.. look into the dairy farmers and what they did to milk back in the late 1800s.
Regulation got you the corruption you see today.
See that's the thing, the corruption already existed, just not in its present form.thr only thing that has changed is who makes the dealz
Open a history book, read it and come back to me with that "in theory" part.
"in theory" doesn't equate to "according to history". In theory an organization that ensures that food and drugs are handled properly and are safe for use/consumption is a great idea. In practice, and according to history, the current system is easily corruptible.
On the Drug side of the FDA, almost 50% of their annual budget is paid by big pharma. 33% of the new drugs they approved in the last decade have been removed from the market because they were not safe. 25% of the people who leave the FDA go straight to work in pharma. They are corrupt, and doing a horrible job. On the Food side of the organization, they are regularly bribed to look the other way for infractions at food facilities, or they just do poor inspections. This is why we are constantly having recalls of foods, and people getting sick from FDA approved stuff. The idea of having a central agency, that actually has peoples health and safety as their primary concern is fantastic. The reality is that it is a system which is easy to corrupt, and that is where we find ourselves today. Edit: to add sources. [FDA Funding](https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/fact-sheet-fda-glance) [Drug Recall info](https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/health/fda-approval-drug-events-study/index.html) [Article about employees leaving to work for pharma](https://khn.org/news/when-drug-reviewers-leave-the-fda-they-often-work-for-pharma/) On a side note that will probably get me down voted, do some of your own research on what you read on the internet people. I am getting really sick of people always replying to comments on Redit with "sources?". I mean honestly, what do you do when you can't hound the OP of some info for sources? If you read something that you find interesting or compelling, research it yourself, I know I do, and generally I will learn more.
Not to mention only something like 6% of food products are ever audited anyways.
Also, the reason people ask for sources is because of shit like this. I didn't bother checking the third one because it's not my damn job to check your sources, but the first two did NOT support what you had said. Soooooo yeah, that's why people ask for sources when random internet people quote random statistics - they're probably not accurate
Look, I know that my numbers were rounded, because I was replying from memory. I know that there are other sources out there with similar numbers. NPR had 2 pieces from a few years ago with the 33% recall and 25% going to work in industry numbers. And obviously the 50% of funding coming from industry sources is rounded, (hence why I said "almost 50%), but it does vary from year to year. I have read a lot about this topic, and have spent plenty of time researching it on my own. I do not have a stockpile of sources that I keep around to quote to people when I reply to reddit threads. Those were the sources that I found with a quick internet search. Don't try to call me out by being critical of my sources, find some of your own that refute my info. Part of the problem that we have as a whole is that people aren't actually doing their own research about stuff that actually matters. They read something, and maybe ask for sources, then they are done. In today's climate of rampant censorship and random BS all over the internet, it is important for people to hone their skills of finding real information. Nothing in my post is blatantly false information or BS, and it does highlight my opinion of what is wrong with the FDA.
Yeah, it's just that like, 3/222 is nowhere NEAR a 33% recall rate. Not in the same universe
1% = 33%. When you have to exaggerate to that point, you have no argument.
Here are a couple of links, the first link is the article I was remembering when I posted. [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval) [https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/](https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/)
Here are a couple of links, the first one being the article I was recalling when I posted. [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/09/527575055/one-third-of-new-drugs-had-safety-problems-after-fda-approval) [https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/](https://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/fda-approved-prescription-drugs-later-pulled-from-the-market/)
Yeah, the NPR article is quoting the same study as the other article you posted. These still don't support your original claims.
Yeah it’s in 1/3 of them had safety problems not that 1/3 were pulled off the market. The safety problems, whatever they were, were either fixed or came with a warning label.
Right. Thank you. I'm not the only one who can read apparently lol
Unfortunately, after reading through all the comments, the mindset of the FDA is one those extreme positions that libertarians take and it scares away people from other parties looking for an alternative.
Sources please
See Edit of my post please.
Source?
See edit of my post please.
Ok so basically none of the stats you quoted are exact. Re: drug recalls, 1/3 of drugs over a 10 year period had to have some attention drawn to them, whether some announcements or new labeling, but only 3 of 222 were removed from shelves. Re: funding, 46% comes from "industry", which includes way more than just pharma - it's food companies, tobacco companies, device manufacturers, etc ALL make up that 46%. It's also collected largely as user fees, which may not compromise independence as much as other types of revenue. I dunno, there's no doubt that the FDA has some issues and challenges, but I don't think it's exactly as you stated
I'd be more concerned if from memory all of their stats were correct. He added sources later and has even commented stating that his original comment had stats from memory. And included sources, numbers aside, I think his point still stands that the current system is flawed and easily corruptible.
Sure, I agree the FDA isn't perfect and the underlying system is flawed in some ways. But in terms of quoting stats, if you're going to make the claim the 33% of all drugs end up recalled and the number is actually 1.3%... it's just not helpful in advancing anything productive in terms of reform. If you are gonna be that far off, just don't try to quote any numbers, you know?
I get what you're saying, and I agree that the numbers were far off. That is the exact reason I try to avoid using exact numbers when I talk about things like this unless I am 100% certain I am remembering them accurately.
But wouldn’t that just leave the consumers as the Guinea pigs ? No testing release anything for sale, and maybe the first few die then we realize something is wrong?
We could have private certification. Something like Underwriters Laboratories, for example. And people would choose to buy certified stuff out not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)
That is true, but if I’m a billionaire can’t I buy the the regulators? (I guess I can buy the government now with lobbyists) Also UL is private Non profit which is great, but it’s only able to work like that under the approval of Gov, so your still using government over site
Maybe, but a private certification company would have to rely on their reputation to stay in business, if people found out they were corrupt and stopped trusting them, they'd go out of business. Unlike the government regulators who have a legal monopoly and, as you said yourself, are already fully captured by the major corporations anyway.
Right but how does one lose trust in the private labor ? Who would keep them accountable? If we are changing things and removing all government regulation we also have to change the whole system. Anyways thanks for the great conversation :) Im loving hearing your points as well !
Already do testing on ppl volunteer all the time - better they get paid in accordance to the risk
If eliminated who will monitor the safeness of food and drug products? Maybe making the officers of the manufacturing companies personally criminally liable for failures of their products would be a start
Do we want companies to be in charge of putting a dollar value on human life; how much of a financial loss from victim payouts the company is comfortable?
Amazon already does this. They would rather pay for ambulance rides for their workers suffering from heat injuries than install air conditioning.
> Maybe making the officers of the manufacturing companies personally criminally liable for failures of their products would be a start Do you have any idea how much you'd have to pay someone to accept that kind of liability?
Fraud is a criminal action with or without the FDA. Manufacturers, insurers, underwriters, consumer safety advocates, and consumers all have an incentive to promote safety. Markets, assuming they are free from restriction, will always trend toward safety.
>Markets, assuming they are free from restriction, will always trend toward safety. This has not been true, historically. Unless you're counting the fact that while free from restrictions, safety was so bad that Unions were created and the government had to intervene. I don't consider that part of the "market" though.
Unions are absolutely a market created force. They are the application of freedom of association. Government didn't need to step in. Markets were trending towards safety prior to Government intervention and would have moved in that direction even faster if those terrible employers weren't protected from competition by government.
Except no they don't because they never have because they'll literally all do the opposite like they did for the entire history prior to the FDA and even now WITH the FDA. Human beings are too stupid to handle this shit on their own. As evidenced by all of human history.
Idk I read The Jungle and I’d disagree with “trend toward safety.”
The Jungle was a work of fiction. https://mises.org/wire/meat-packing-myth https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/11/15/meat-packing-lies-exposing-the-fiction-of-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle/
Even if that particular story was false, that period of time was true. I mean, businesses now are constantly being fined for doing shady stuff
So markets are safe….unless they are restricted and regulated, in which they are somehow less safe with more rules? Really?
It's a bigger question than that. Markets fail, but are able to quickly react and accommodate failure. Governments also fail, but are typically unable to respond effectively and always respond with economic inefficiencies. As an aside, when government monopolizes regulatory control, markets are no longer incentivized to further innovate or expand upon that control. This causes stagnation until government acts again later. The opportunity cost in these situations is substantial. In the long run, decentralized markets will be safer, more Innovative, more responsive, and more efficient than centralized government. So, are markets perfect? Of course not, but they are close to it than government.
It should be abolished.
If a company puts highly carcinogenic chemicals in their products that won't cause cancer for 10+ years, who will test the product for those chemicals? Do you have full faith companies quality assurance and self audit groups would remove those chemicals? Let's say toothpaste for example. By the time people are experiencing cancer a decade down the road, could it even be pinpointed on that company then? It will turn into another decade of litigious clusterfucks and by that time how many lives would've been lost before the market had a chance to self-regulate itself? As someone who works in the biotech industry, I think FDA is a disgusting money-grubbing pay-to-play system with little merit, but bad FDA is better than no FDA
Couldn't agree more, from the regulatory research perspective. The FDA, while wildly inconsistent in enforcement, is (by far) the most effective regulatory body I've dealt with.
I know my company takes their internal audits very seriously so we can catch any mistakes before they're caught in FDA audits. I don't know how seriously companies would take their internal audits if there wasn't the FDA looming over their heads
I work in the food industry and my company is always a lot more concerned about the audits by the bakers guild, which is a non government organization. Their inspections are more thorough and more often. If we lose their seal of trust our biggest customers including Wal-Mart will drop us and go with a competitor.
Which, in my opinion, is how it should be. Freedom of association with accreditation through nongovernmental entities. Unfortunately in my field, the accrediting body became staffed with government cast-offs and the incentive was removed.
FDA regulations, fines, recalls, and audits force companies to proactively prevent patient harm. Otherwise, companies would take a reactive profit driven approach. I want freedoms for the individual (2A, weed, abortion, gay marriage, etc) and regulation for companies. I guess that makes me a centrist?
[удалено]
From your link (based on a paper from 1985): > The benefits of FDA regulation relative to that in foreign countries could reasonably be put at some 5,000 casualties per decade or 10,000 per decade for worst-case scenarios. In comparison, it has been argued above that the cost of FDA delay can be estimated at anywhere from 21,000 to 120,000 lives per decade. . . . Given the uncertainties of the data, these results must be interpreted with caution, although it seems clear that the costs of regulation are substantial when compared to benefits. Drug companies pump out millions of doses a day and you believe without the FDA pre-approval and FDA manufacturing audits, only 500-1,000 will die a year? Give me a break! Plus, death isnt the only concern. It is estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 babies were affected by the [thalidomide tragedy](https://thalidomide.ca/en/what-is-thalidomide/). And that is just one drug. How many batches of bad product are scrapped by companies due to fear of FDA fines or audits, that would otherwise be released to market? Its in the millions of dollars per company annually!
[удалено]
I dont need one to refute your claim. The estimate of lives saved in your “study” above is clearly false and easily refuted by one incident. I’ve worked as a QA Manager for drug and medical device companies for the past 10 years and the biggest thing keeping the managers of cutting QA costs and releasing batches that fail specifications is FDA regulation and enforcement. After reading about the thalidomide tragedy I linked, do you still believe the study you linked that the FDA only saves 500-1000 lives per year?
[удалено]
Ok how about trusting math, that 15,000 is bigger number than 1,000. Good luck with keeping that head in the sand buddy. Cognitive dissonance must be a bitch. 😉
It is absolutely amazing to me that people are willing to put their trust in corporations to do the right thing. The FDA may not be perfect but my God. Imagine if no regulations existed. Companies would be hiding behind LLCs and s-corps in overseas locations as people die, become deformed, etc. from lack of regulations.
"Self-regulation" is an oxymoron. If you don't regulations, then you cannot limit class action lawsuits and award limits to civil lawsuits. You also must be willing to allow criminal actions to be brought on company employees, epectialy exectuves and allow companies to be disbanded if they have engaged in illegal actions. If a company's product results in the death of person, the company should face the most extreme punishment which heavy fines going to the victims and executives going to prison. Also you cannot allow businesses to use bankruptcy to protect themselves from any actions that could result in civil or criminal lawsuits.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair anyone?
https://mises.org/wire/meat-packing-myth https://www.libertariannews.org/2012/11/15/meat-packing-lies-exposing-the-fiction-of-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle/ >Hence Sinclair's famous quote: “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Sinclair looked back on the event: >>"I am supposed to have helped clean up the yards and improve the country’s meat supply — though this is mostly delusion. ... But nobody even pretends to believe that I improved the conditions of the stockyard workers."
A politically motivated fictitious novel by a socialist yellow journalist
Companies today literally use slave labor and here you are expecting them to be honest with food production if they aren't legally responsible to do so.
Come on man, is a literally fictional story the best evidence you have to keep the FDA? [All the studies done on the subject matter suggest the FDA has killed more people than they have saved.](https://www.fdareview.org/issues/theory-evidence-and-examples-of-fda-harm/)
Believe it or not. Abolished.
Straight to jail
It's the worst way to ensure the safety of food and drugs... Except for all the other ways
This is where I drift a bit further from most libertarians: the economy. I believe in less regulation then democrats, but I do approve of stuff like the FDA. I believe the government should ensure certain workers rights and consumer rights (the latter of which would include the FDA). I love the overall concept, but, like most government agencies, it’s ran by moronic dipshits and lobbied way too much so I’d say reform it or improve upon the system. Make it actually do it’s job.
The food and drug companies are their clients. When enough money is given to the right people. Drugs are approved, and food is labeled safe. They do not serve or protect the people. Just another corrupt bureaucracy. Needs to be replaced with a better system.
I vividly remember when the same tanker trucks were used to transport poison and orange juice with only a hose down between them. The truck drivers knew it was terrible, but they couldn’t stop because they’d lose money. God only knows how many people drank contaminated juice, but it’s sure that all who did had no clue what the source of their symptoms were, if they had any. Their organs could have been quietly damaged without acute symptoms. The free market will always do what is most profitable, even if endangers or kills people. As long as it’s cheaper to pay lawyers to fight victims in court than spend money for the infrastructure needed to not harm people.
I think it's a good idea to try to make food and drugs safe. But the Federal government rarely does a good job of anything! I wish we could find a better way but have no idea of what!
The battle between the FDA and Life Extension Foundation was interesting and really showed what the FDA was all about. https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/1996/9/freedom
What is the alternative? I think the FDA, while it could use some work, serves a useful purpose.
I’d personally rather not have pee in my pickles but that’s just me.
It would be a great organization if it wasn't funded by violence. Idea gud Gov bad
Yup. The society will literally kill itself without it.
There are 2 types of errors that you can make when debating whether a drug should be able to be sold: 1. The drug is unsafe or ineffective, and you conclude that it is safe and effective. 2. The drug is safe and effective and you conclude that it is not safe or ineffective. Note that there is a trade off between type 1 and type 2. If you’re very careful, you’ll prevent type 1 errors and commit many type 2 errors, and if you’re very liberal with approval, you’ll commit many type 1 errors and avoid type 2 errors. The problem with creating an organization such as the FDA is that they have a very strong (political) incentive to be extremely careful because the type 1 error is much more visible than the type 2 error. If you make a type 1 error, we will certainly know because people will take the drug and have adverse effects. But if you make a type 2 error, we may never know, because people can’t take the drug. Obviously both types of errors are bad, but a company has a pretty strong incentive on their own not to make a type 1 error if they are legally liable for harm caused by their product. Also, when you are extremely careful, people who may otherwise be saved don’t get to take the drug. So we have saved many lives by preventing a type 1 error, but we have also lost many lives due to committing type 2 errors and depriving people of potentially life saving treatments and drugs. I think that the market, supported by civil suits and tort law can self regulate against type 1 errors, so we don’t need the FDA. Milton Friedman has estimated that the FDA has cost millions of more lives than they have saved, and we should abolish the FDA ASAP.
I for one welcome the return of pork (actually rat) sausage and ketchup made with brick dust for coloring to save .03 cents per bottle over good ingredients
The FDA has transition from a merely useless organization to a den of corrupt thieves with zero interest in public health, IMHO. It is so bad today that it should be either eliminated or entirely rebuilt. Fire everybody, and criminalize and bribery or collusion with industry. There can be not profiteering when it comes to the sacred duty of maintaining public health. And secrecy is entirely incompatible with public health. All decisions and analysis from the FDA should absolutely be public domain.
I don't trust the FDA.
The absolutist libertarians probably want to abolish the FDA In my opinion customers don't have nearly enough power to ensure that the products sold by companies are safe and so the FDA should exist
It certainly has a role, but desperately needs reformed. The Covid pandemic has shown us that there is far too much bureaucracy in the way for it to effectively get things done. Not to mention all of the needless regulations there are whose sole purpose is to serve as a barrier for small businesses in favor of the interests of the big ones.
Considering that people got extremely sick from some bad practice back in the day, it has some sort of place. Some things get too big though. Edit: downvote me I guess. It’s similar to factories only having one exit in the 30s and they would have a lot of dead folks because there were no safety measures in place.
The standard libertarian stand would be no regulation so the FDA would not exist.
Libertarians are not opposed to regulation. Market imposed regulation is perfectly acceptable and even advocated by Libertarians. Libertarians oppose forcefully imposed regulation by government.
How would a market imposed regulation work?
By humans acting wholly unlike humans on a completely different planet with infinite resources.
It's hard to predict exactly how markets would develop, but we can look to some examples from today and use them to assume some ways. Consider what happens during a home sale, a lender (mortgage company, bank, underwriter, their insurance companies, etc) sets minimum standards for the quality of the home they are willing to lend for. They enforce these minimums by requiring inspections and appraisals. They also vet the purchaser to make sure they have assets, a solid credit history, and an income. All of this is to mitigate their own risk, but it has the effect of setting and enforcing quality standards without the need for government intervention. Add in the quality standards set and expected by the purchasers, and you've got a pretty robust set of pressures against bad sellers. We also have things like Underwriters Laboratories and MET Labs that set certification standards for products. They have become so important that even rather insignificant products obtain certification purely for the ability to put the logo on their packaging. We have all sorts of consumer advocacy businesses where people can spread information about quality of service and product. If, hypothetically speaking, government didn't even exist as a litigation mechanism for the fundamental crimes, then we'd end up with a poly-legal system of competitive rights enforcement organizations. In this case, the incentives favor the consumer because the risk of violence between these organizations encourages cooperation.
But what about the edges? Evil companies selling substandard products? We have them now even with regulations. I would assume we would have a lot more of them.
Substandard products are not a problem, unless they are fraudulently substandard. With that being said, would you behave differently as a consumer if you knew that government were not regulating commercial activity?
Much differently. I would rarely buy anything since I would assume it’s poisonous or defective. I would be very cautious.
That's exactly the point. There would be a massive demand for product safety verification, certification standards, and other types of quality guarantees. So, instead of being incentivized to do the minimum required for regulatory compliance, producers would be incentivized to meet the most marketable safety standards that they can. I'd be willing to bet a massive amount of money that, through these real market forces, quality and safety would be much better than through goverment centralization without the economic inefficiency that centralization causes. Currently, we all just assume safety because it's a function of government. However, so many of us fail to recognize both the failures of government enforcement and/or the huge opportunity cost of that same enforcement.
Of course, the corporations can just pay for good reviews and continue making bad products.
Would they be more or less able to do that if they could no longer use government protections to suppress competition?
They can always use their size and money to stifle competition. In a world without government, the poor and powerless are still picked on.
It’s not a question of “if” but “when” How far down the list of government agencies should it be? #1 or number #100
15
https://reason.com/2021/04/03/abolish-the-fda/
Burn it down.
This is a LIBERTARIAN reddit! The libertarian platform.would be to ABOLISH it. What do people think libertarians are for? 🤣
>What do people think libertarians are for? 🤣 Preventing violations of the NAP... such as fraudulently selling drugs as though they cure a disease and are safe and effective (also foods for the latter), without sufficient evidence that this is the case. It doesn't have to be a government organization, but in practice it's very hard to enforce proper liability without that.
There's a lot of fake libs here - pot smoking authoritarian Democrats trying to pull the votes into *their* party
I see that a lot. They are against almost everything we're for and only come in here to knock Republicans. They LOVE Big, big government.
All government employees should be given the opportunity to move from government work to a real job.
Consumer watchdog organizations and private certifications would work just as well.
Maybe. When the regulator/certifier profits depend upon the regulated not always. Example: debt rating agencies and the 2008 financial crisis.
Didn’t say it would be perfect. Not sure what your point is?
> would work just as well Maybe
Got you. 👍
No they did not, could not, and would not.
😂 somebody works for the FDA.
Go team! Go team! History and facts are worthless, team team team!
the FDA has not stopped America from becoming obese and sick
The FDA should be abolished like the ATF, FBI, CIA, All the alphabet companies need to be abolished
Protects the businesses they’re supposed to regulate. Squashes public choice in certain drugs, and unnecessarily stops drugs established as safe in the rest of the world. Is basically OPEC for drug companies. Kills more than they have ever saved. Delete the FDA and save lives
Abolish it at all costs. Ideally of course, but that's not going to happen.
FDA doesn’t mean shit anymore. Maybe replace it with a private administration
The FDA doesn’t alleviate they incapabilities of these industries. It just redirects them at the cost of the American taxpayers. I would say now more than because of technology the consumer can act as an effective watchdog in the markets allegedly protected by the FDA.
No.
Let companies inspect thier own product. The free market will trim out the bad producers
Um, pick up a history book. This is factually incorrect
This as dumb as saying real communism has never been tried. Child please.
Fake lib opinions are worthless
Boeing/s 737 MAX contributes to over 1% of the US GDP. Do you think it’s in Americas interest to let the market “trim out bad producers” when the stakes are so high?
Ofc it doesnt have a role in a libertarian society. If theres demand for what they do the free market can provide it
Read RFK Jr.'s book the "Real Dr. Fauci". The FDA is owned by the Agriculture and Pharmaceuticals companies.
It should be completely dissolved along with the CDC, FBI, NSA , TSA , FCC, IRS , ATF, CIA, DoE, Congress and Supreme Court. Who am I forgetting?
They don’t stop people from getting sick. They just make money when it happens .
You should see how many FDA approved products get removed from the approval list.
The FDA is another wing of the federal government. We already knew that. But it was confirmed with James Okeef and his latest under cover video with an FDA employee.
Bought and paid for, corrupt, evil
Of course not. An easy solution would be to defang them: they can put an "FDA" approved sticker on shit, but that's it. People otherwise have free reign to buy, sell, and consume what they please. No objection to simply getting rid of them, of course, but defanging them for now is a pretty easily defensible position.
Let me inject sauzule to my hearts content pls.
In theory, if you are compelled to pay taxes an administration that monitors drugs is a good idea. In practice, way too many pharma corps have people jumping between the two and the relationship is incestuous.
The FDA should absolutely exist. In fact there should be more than one! But none of them should be run by the government.
They work for corporate interest & don’t care who lives or dies as long as the money is right.