The FDA Kills

Dr. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix, says cancer could be cured in the near future. The biggest obstacle, however, is the FDA:

“The FDA has so many regulations,” Dr. [James] Watson says. “They don’t want you to try a new thing if there’s an old thing that might work…So you take the old thing, but we know cancer changes over time and we would really like to get it whacked early, and not late. But the regulations are saying you can’t do these things until we give you a lot of s— drugs,” he snorts. “Shouldn’t this be the patient’s choice to say I would rather beat the odds with a total cure rather than just to know that I am going to have all my hair fall out and then after a year I’m dead?…Why should [FDA commissioner] Margaret Hamburg hold things up? There’s the cynical answer it gives employment to lawyers.”

The whole interview with Dr. Watson is an interesting read.

Care for a bit more on the FDA?

An industry survey shows that medical devices are approved in Europe about two full years earlier than when the device is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the United States. For standard medical device approvals, approvals take 54 months in the U.S. compared to 11 months in Europe. There is no evidence of compromised safety in Europe due to premature approvals.

(h/t John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog)

In other words, the FDA is preventing life-saving treatments, devices, procedures, etc., from coming to market in a timely manner. Liberals regularly accuse conservatives of hard-heartedness, callousness, an utter lack of concern for the protection of consumers and citizens from the dangers of greedy businessmen and unregulated markets. But in their determination to protect us from ourselves, they forget, ignore, or overlook the fact that regulation kills as well, and often needlessly — think of all the Americans whose quality of life could have been vastly improved or whose untimely deaths might have been prevented during the 54-month delay until the average medical device was approved (43 months longer than in Europe). While no one denies the desirability of the objective of protecting the public from unsafe and ineffective drugs, there is considerable evidence indicating that FDA regulation has been counterproductive, as the example above shows; and meanwhile, the FDA attempts to increase its reach. The harm caused by the FDA’s retardation of the development and distribution of life-saving medical treatment has far outweighed the good of preventing the distribution of harmful or ineffective drugs.

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