From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.medicine
Subject: Re: Might be a FAQ
Date: 24 Dec 1992 00:56:08 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <1ha9gvINNrn@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> kris@bsg8.Corp.Sun.COM writes:
>
>I'm not sure where he gets his statistics, but, Andre Marou states that
>in lifetime of the FDA they have saved 15,000 and killed 250,000
>through their policies.

In article <1992Dec23.053052.11058@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>I just posted an article to talk.politics.medicine on how the FDA murders
>100,000 people annually from one policy alone.

Looks like libertarians can't get their numbers within orders of magnitude of
each other.

>The FDA has the blood of every person who has died from delays or bans on
>drugs all over them, and its enough for them to drown in.

Oh, what lovely purple prose.  Not to mention a non-sequiteur, since the
drug Tim is mentioning is asprin.  There is no delay or ban on asprin.
There is a ban on advertising unreviewed medical claims.

Of course Tim is ignoring the fact that people at risk are being counseled
by their doctors to take asprin (my father does.)  Tim pretends this is a giant
conspiracy, when it is merely standard procedure not to allow unreviewed
claims to be advertised.  (Interesting constitutional issues here: conflict
of freedom of speech with the power to regulate interstate commerce.
It would be interesting if someone reported how this was settled: it must
have been challenged at some point.)

Let's talk about how many people are "murdered" annually by ONE "natural"
drug which is not regulated by the FDA: tobacco.  Which used to be advertised
for its health effects.  Isn't the "free market" wonderful?  (My grandmother
died of this one.)

Let's deregulate drugs and their advertising so that drug companies can
appeal directly to the consumer for whatever fraudulent fad they can start.
For example, in the far east, where advertising has encouraged prophylactic
dosing with antibiotics the same way you'd take vitamins, resulting in
high rates of antibiotic resistant disease.

Let's not forget the already high rate of prescription dosage of worthless,
ineffective drugs (according to various Nader groups.)  What the world needs
is more dubious drugs: the latest fashions in expensive placebos.  Libertarians
whine about government waste: the fact is that individuals waste enormous
amounts of money on placebo OTC remedies and "nutritional supplements"
already.  Hey, let's deregulate so that we can all self-administer
inappropriate drugs according to the latest pop fashions fostered by drug
marketers.

My sister works for Bristol Meyers.  She supervises drug testing for some
new drugs, the same studies the FDA reviews to approve drugs.  These tests
are EXPENSIVE and necessary: without them, side effects would not be noticed,
and effectiveness of the drug would not be known.  Without a requirement for
these tests, funding for testing drugs would dry up.  It's much cheaper to
sell an ineffective drug without testing.  My sister tells me that many
costly drugs are only marginally effective: that's enough for approval.
But it's not enough to stand out from a placebo in anything other than a
rigidly controlled test: in other words, you've no protection from fraud.

Mike Huben

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble
reasoning of a single individual."  Galileo Galilei
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian