Do you think the FDA has too much power?

[Insidb]

sc94597 said:

fatslob-:O said:

sc94597 said:

The first was exactly my point. I think the FDA aren't efficient at their goals for a multitude of reasons. They are a monopoly. They are partly inefficient because command control regulations are inefficient. They have conflicting goals. They are corruptible, as are all authorities. So on, so on. I don't think feeding them more money will fix their problems. It will likely be wasted to hire the wrong people. Meanwhile, for as much "good" the FDA does there is plenty of harm to science and the advancement of medicine in general. 

There's way too much fluff in your response ... No need to focus on the politics.

Hiring Wrong people ? The only people that they do ever hire for their technical staff are a minimum of undergraduate biologists and chemists. 

The FDA does practically only one thing and it is the regulation of health products so what exactly do they have to do with the advancement of medicine ? 

The FDA is much more than just the technical staff.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WorkingatFDA/CareerDescriptions/default.htm

Anyway, people are much more than the degrees they hold. Having a working knowledge of science and regulating the economic activities of individuals using that knowledge are two different things. 

What is a subset of health products? Medicine. There are plenty of people who die every year because the medicine that could save their lives has not yet been pre-approved by the FDA, for whatever ridiculous reason (most likely cronyism.) But on the less emotional side of things, recently 23andme (a personal genotyping company) could no longer provide its health data to people who purchased their product, because apparently the FDA felt it was a diagnosistic device rather than a resource that looks at your SNP's and attaches peer-reviewed studies to the SNP's. Anybody who purchased this product after a certain date, were no longer able to access this "health data." Certainly that is impeding the application of science. 

Yes, the FDA might do some good, but it does it in the most inefficient way possible, with plenty of bad things along the way which take from our lives. But what do you expect from a monopoly. 

Uh..."FOOD and Drug Administration" lol...the former is kind of a big deal lol. One of the major problems with the FDA is that it is underfunded and understaffed. It's not really that corrupt, to be honest. They just have no teeth, and the lobbyists run congress, and congress makes the laws. They can't enforce what they are incapabale or legally disallowed from enforcing. I say this from experience with their approvals process: they just review what they're given (when they have the people available) and follow their guidelines to a tee. if you work with them for a while, you see how limited they really are and how much big corporations have wrested from their oversight.