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Forums - Politics Discussion - Do you think the FDA has too much power?

Skullwaker said:
sc94597 said:
Skullwaker said:
Well, only one person in the FDA regulates the entire water bottle industry, so yes.

Do you have a source for that?

Beginning with the paragraph that starts with "FDA and state bottled water programs are seriously underfunded." http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp

Notice how it doesn't say that. It says that the FDA has the equivalent of less than one person. Which likely means that there are many people who regulate bottled water, but they also do many other things, spending about as much time  regulating bottled water as if there were one staff member dedicated to this. But the report goes on to mention how this is an inefficiency of allocation of resources. The FDA spends more than it needs to on tap water and less than it needs to on bottled water. 



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sc94597 said:
Skullwaker said:
sc94597 said:
Skullwaker said:
Well, only one person in the FDA regulates the entire water bottle industry, so yes.

Do you have a source for that?

Beginning with the paragraph that starts with "FDA and state bottled water programs are seriously underfunded." http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp

Notice how it doesn't say that. It says that the FDA has the equivalent of less than one person. Which likely means that there are many people who regulate bottled water, but they also do many other things, spending about as much time  regulating bottled water as if there were one staff member dedicated to this. But the report goes on to mention how this is an inefficiency of allocation of resources. The FDA spends more than it needs to on tap water and less than it needs to on bottled water. 

That's essentially the same thing then, perhaps even worse because there's no one that has a dedicated job of regulating bottled water. Regardless though, they don't spend enough time or resources on it. At this point, bottled water is more harmful than tap water, and big businesses spend so much money trying to convince us otherwise. If you have any interest in this topic, I really advise that you watch or at least skim the documentary "FLOW: For Love of Water." It's really informative and faces the facts, dangers and possible solutions of our situation regarding water.



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Skullwaker said:
sc94597 said:
Skullwaker said:
sc94597 said:
Skullwaker said:
Well, only one person in the FDA regulates the entire water bottle industry, so yes.

Do you have a source for that?

Beginning with the paragraph that starts with "FDA and state bottled water programs are seriously underfunded." http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp

Notice how it doesn't say that. It says that the FDA has the equivalent of less than one person. Which likely means that there are many people who regulate bottled water, but they also do many other things, spending about as much time  regulating bottled water as if there were one staff member dedicated to this. But the report goes on to mention how this is an inefficiency of allocation of resources. The FDA spends more than it needs to on tap water and less than it needs to on bottled water. 

That's essentially the same thing then, perhaps even worse because there's no one that has a dedicated job of regulating bottled water. Regardless though, they don't spend enough time or resources on it. At this point, bottled water is more harmful than tap water, and big businesses spend so much money trying to convince us otherwise. If you have any interest in this topic, I really advise that you watch or at least skim the documentary "FLOW: For Love of Water." It's really informative and faces the facts, dangers and possible solutions of our situation regarding water.

Honestly, it is a way to skew people to support their cause. Ten people working for one hour each are much more efficient than one person working for ten hours. Same is true for say 20 people spending some of their time working on regulating bottled water vs. one person spending all of his/her time. 20 people have vastly more skills and knowledge than one person.  Nevertheless, I do believe that there is an inconsistency here. There should be no reason why tap water is regulated so much more than bottled water, if the system is suppose to be equitable. 

I'll skim the documentary you mentioned though. I don't doubt that the FDA chooses favorites here. They do it in pretty much every industry they regulate.



sc94597 said:
Insidb said:
sc94597 said:
Insidb said:
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.

In which areas are they understaffed? Anyway, all I see is an FDA that supports these large corporations by devastating their competition (smaller, cheaper drug companies.) An FDA that spends a lot of its supposedly understaffed time to go after people selling raw milk or genetic companies, or telling blood clinics that homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to give blood, when it really could use such valuable time doing the countless other more crucial jobs it was supposedly tasked with, like I don't know - targetting fraud. 

Their budget has been cut YoY, ever since their last big "success" (denying approval to some dangerous EU drig or something). Remem that they need people to do what you're suggesting (all great points, by the way) AND congressional apporval (in the pockets of big corporations). They just process requests, by and large, and don't care whom they come from, so long as they meet their submission requirements. A lot of their more valuable oversight has either been taken away or requires staff that is nonexistent. 

If you cut the FDA budget, we're gonna have...a bad time.

My point is that despite this supposedy budget problem, the FDA is still able to hire a person to write the bullshit literature about homosexuality and blood donation. The FDA is still able to spend resources and time to confront benign companies like 23andme while allowing rampantly fraudelent companies free pass. The FDA is capable of targetting small Amish farmers about selling raw milk over state lines to people who will get the raw milk regardless. The FDA is supposedly constrained on time and resources, yet it can fund all of these silly projects. The problem isn't a small budget, the problem is inefficiency. If the FDA weren't a public institution on the tax payer teat it wouldn't have budget problems like this. It would've learned how to spend money wisely. As it is now, it acts like any other monopoly. 

Point taken, but there is a lot of missing context there. For instance, the blood donation law is from 1985, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Also, the ban on raw milk is reasonable, if poorly enforced and unenforceable. To put the cuts in context, look at the links from the previous 5 years raising and detailing the concerns of budget cuts:

2009: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/news/ap/finance_business/2009/May/07/fda_nominee_pledges_to_revamp_food_safety.html

2010: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/09/us-summit-fda-idUSTRE6A84QI20101109

2011: http://www.anh-usa.org/house-cuts-fda-budget-by-285-million/

2012: http://www.foodqualitynews.com/Regulation-and-safety/FDA-and-FSIS-funding-set-to-be-cut-after-bill-approved

2013: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20131105/NEWS/311059963 

They clearly have been publicly struggling with budgetary concerns for some time, and their employees and associates will voice the same concern. Let's not lose sight of the fact that the FDA is empowered by legislative action to enforce certain enacted laws, not to enact laws. They simply make recommendations based upon those laws just like other goverment regulatory agencies, like the SEC. In these situations, you get their opinions or recommendations (leaving them with no fault). Rarely do their (unofficial) judgements contradict the laws they are tasked with enforcing, but anyone who contradicts their judgments should expect to be prosecuted for contradicting their judgements.