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COMMENTS:
Voted : No, the FDA shouldn't be abolished
Sounds like the way cave men found out which nuts and berries were poisonous by looking at what happened to the last person to eat them.
Voted : No, the FDA shouldn't be abolished
But the FDA should have a thorough house-cleaning. They are corrupt, and in the pockets of Big Pharma.
p.s. can I have about 100 of that white pill with the '100' stamped on it?
by mojo on Thu Dec 07, 06 6:35am
[+]
Voted : No, the FDA shouldn't be abolished
Preposterus idea, and a step backwards for civilisation.
Fortunately, you can advocate reform of the FDA (or British equivalent) without being so extreme, and consequently, thats what Im doing right now.
Word.
Voted : No, the FDA shouldn't be abolished
Any group so big needs some cleaning up now and then.
But it's still a good 'idea' to have someone working in the consumers' interests not just the money makers'
by Jyl on Thu Dec 07, 06 7:09am
[+]
Voted : No, the FDA shouldn't be abolished
No, that's too radical. I agree with mojo that the whole system need a good overhaul. 
Voted : No, the FDA shouldn't be abolished
Fix it, but don't toss it out the window. That would give the Guv'mint the chance to put something *worse* in ts palce.
Voted : It's a complex issue.
*sigh* I see cranky's ridden into Dodge, a'firin' off non sequiturs yet again. YEE-HAAWW!!
First of all, thanks for at least acknowledging that only some Libertarians would want to abolish the FDA. Unless I missed something at some point, it's not a specific party platform of the Libertarian Party itself.
Next, he misses out on the basic fact that there actually is a very large, very powerful group with a strong financial interest in punishing companies that put defective products out on the market--class action attorneys. They are reviled as "ambulance chasers" and some political halfwits, most all with "R" (but more than a few "D" classifications) after their names on the voter rolls want "tort reform" to limit "unconscionable settlements." This is, of course, a complete load of crap, pure and simple. It wasn't the FDA that really took fenfluramine (fen/phen related drugs) or Vioxx out of the market, it was the looming (and very real) threat of class action suits that really frightened them. As a matter of fact, the FDA was painfully slow in dealing with either, while class action attorneys tend to gang up on companies, like piranha, almost immediately. In the end, as with big tobacco litigation, it was the private sector that really cleaned the clocks of the malefactor drug companies like Merck.
Nothing gets a jury up in arms like hearing that some big cold corporation deliberately tried to stuff evidence in the incinerator. That was the case with Reynolds Tobacco, and, in a non-drug tort case, that was the case with the infamous Ford Pinto internal memo from a GM engineer. Once he was aware that the ubiquitous little 1970's car had a gas tank that could blow up like the Hindenberg, the bastard joked, in print about being able to expect a certain number of "crispy critters" but maintaining profitability. That cost GM plenty, and all such suits cost these companies tens of billions of dollars.
I won't even mention the fact that much information is available out there on the internet, not tied in with the "major news outlets," as you seem to paranoidly assert ABC, MSNBC, THE NEW YORK TIMES and the rest have all been bought out. The legal and information environment is totally different now than when Upton Sinclair and other muckrakers could write exposes like THE JUNGLE that led to the agitation for the formation of the FDA.
Has the FDA outlived its usefulness? Probably not, but neither is it the sole barrier against the drug company barbarians, either.
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