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| ▲ | jcranmer 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The more-or-less unregulated drug industry that you envision is something that already exists: it's called "health supplements." And it's a disasters; there's been quite a few studies that show that many of the companies selling health supplements can't even be bothered to put in their claimed active ingredients. This isn't some hypothetical "well, we haven't tried to see what it would look like without regulation;" this is something that is already in existence and whose effects can be measured today! |
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| ▲ | AdieuToLogic 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Should allow pharma to sell drugs to the market. This was the case pre-FDA. IIRC, that is how heroin was sold in drug stores. See also OxyContin[0]. > Allow people to sue if they are harmed. So you advocate a costly post-harm remediation instead of a preemptive solution provided by governmental regulations? > Do not care about a government agency preventing access to new drugs. See previous reference to heroin once being an over-the-counter product. 0 - https://apnews.com/article/purdue-pharma-sackler-settlement-... |
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| ▲ | terminalshort 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | > So you advocate a costly post-harm remediation instead of a preemptive solution provided by governmental regulations Absolutely. Such solutions tend to be much cheaper and more effective. It's how we deal with the vast majority of problems for a good reason. If we sold oxycontin over the counter we would have much less of an overdose problem than we do. Would also take a lot of stress off our emergency medical care system which spends an inordinate amount of time just dealing with addicts looking for drugs. It's a funny example to use to justify the current regulatory framework because oxycontin got approved by the very same. | | |
| ▲ | AdieuToLogic 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | >> So you advocate a costly post-harm remediation instead of a preemptive solution provided by governmental regulations > Absolutely. Such solutions tend to be much cheaper and more effective. This is not supported by any credible analysis I am aware of, as the cost of rectifying a problem post hoc has historically been far greater than preventing it in the first place. > If we sold oxycontin over the counter we would have much less of an overdose problem than we do. This assertion is demonstrably wrong and could easily be categorized as insulting to people struggling with OxyContin addiction. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | People with opiate addiction have access to the cheapest and strongest narcotics ever available on the street. Unfortunately they are of uneven strength and cut with horrors that make their body shut down. I would much prefer they could just buy clean drugs from the pharma companies. |
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| ▲ | TFYS 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Insanity. Do you honestly believe the average person (probably a sick one at that) has the resources and time to fight a large pharmaceutical company in court? And do you really believe that during the time between releasing the drug and losing in court the faulty drug wouldn't make the company much more money than they'd have to pay as compensation? The amount of organization it would require to beat a large company with its resources would guarantee that most abuses would go unpunished and suffering would certainly increase compared to an environment with well functioning FDA. |
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| ▲ | monero-xmr 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | All of that still happens even with the FDA approving drugs. Luckily we have class action process | | |
| ▲ | TFYS 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not to the same extent, and the solution to that is to improve the FDA, not to demolish it and let companies poison and fool people freely. Class action is what I meant with the difficulty of organizing. To make a class action happen and win, the damage done must be massive enough to get enough people to notice it and take action, and must be easily and cheaply provable. A class action is not going to fund expensive scientific studies that prove their problem was caused by the company they're suing. Your solution would only prevent the absolute worst cases. Any damage that's rare, hard to notice or prove, small, long term, etc would not get compensated and would cost society much more than properly funding FDA. |
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| ▲ | const_cast 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Should allow pharma to sell drugs to the market. Allow people to sue if they are harmed. This is a comical extreme vision of libertarian politics. Everything gets worse, lots of people die, but it's okay because we have a small principle of freedom. Yeah. Great. If you're trying to persuade people you're doing a very shit job. |
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| ▲ | sorcerer-mar 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Tell me: how do you prove that a drug hurt you? Spoiler alert: you cannot. The reason clinical trials are so expensive and complicated is because it's extremely hard to isolate signal of "what is this drug doing to people." So on what basis would you possibly sue a company? As another commenter said, we have an entire industry of the form you desire: supplements. Go take them to treat your next illness so you can really experience the creme de la creme that FDA is apparently keeping from you. Good luck suing for lack of effectiveness or for any harms you encounter. |
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| ▲ | monero-xmr 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Insurance companies will not cover ineffective drugs. Pharma will have to prove efficacy. Allow free people to spend their own money how they want | | |
| ▲ | sorcerer-mar 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | What incentive does an insurance company with an expected coverage period of 4 years have to prevent a drug with long term harm from reaching its patients? What about drugs that people do not buy via insurance? Just have a free for all there? Why wouldn't pharma just release the drug to the public at very low cost to use the unwitting public as its test subjects instead of running trials to satisfy insurance companies? If a bunch of people die then welp, you know not to pursue "insurance approval?" Can't see how we could go wrong by making it very difficult to sell a working, expensive drug, and make it extremely cheap to sell a mass-market ineffective/unsafe drug... |
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