5 Dr. Charles Hennekens, the Harvard Medical School researcher who directed the study and lobbied the FDA to lift the ban on this information, estimates that general use of the treatment could save 5,000 to 10,000 lives per year. That's 5,000 to 10,000 lives for each of the eight years the FDA's ban was in place. Take a step back. Thousands died unnecessarily because the FDA hid information about aspirin. The total cost of the FDA's ban across the spectra of all medications and all forms of illness can only be imagined.
Doctors are perhaps the best educated and most judicious members of society.
The federal government, whether through the FDA or any other bureaucracy, has no business dictating how or when doctors will learn of life-saving medical information, much less hiding this information from them. The freedom to share medical information is essential to protecting the public health. Congress should take away the FDA's power to hide medical information. While the ban violates doctors' First Amendment rights, patients pay the ultimate price.