Worth reminding everyone that, on top of pharma and food, the FDA also regulates medical devices.

Insufficient regulation both on approval _and_ inspection of medical devices (thinking surgical applications and implantables for example) is as impactful on patient safety as drugs.

The damage to U.S. government safety institutions by the current administration may be significant, from faulty pacemakers and cancer-inducing scanning machines to disabled babies and Ebola.

It’s not some temporary thing where we can just raise awareness and then people will vote them out of office next time. The changes that have been made affect the ability for those opposing to win the next election, and even if they were to, the checks and balances have gone.

At this point, unless you plan to work to undo it long-term, you could accept that our society will be quickly devolving maybe 100-150 years or more.

In the past, opportunity abounded in fake science, magical thinking, weird products, dirty industry, manual labor, inequity, and brutish behavior.

If they want to outlaw processed foods and we all start eating flavorless thick hard biscuits of grain and beans and less-than-stellar-looking fruits and vegetables, it’ll probably be better for my mental and physical health.

However, that may be offset by my teeth rotting from lack of fluoride and getting cancer and intestinal problems from lack of regulation. And the death, disease, and disablement will overshadow the fear and excitement from street fights, arcing electrical devices, dangerous bubbling chemicals, planes falling from the sky, things exploding, medicine shows, and AI whorehouses.

NeuralLink is suddenly going to get a miraculous green light for broad human trials hey

I used to work for that branch. They'd joke it's the FDDA. Paid peanuts but I learned a lot and had a great boss (who showed up to my house one day unannounced to gift me the Art of Programming because I said I didn't have a copy months prior).

There are serious cyber security implications too.

A recent discovery was a heart rate monitor used in hospitals that sent all data, including full patient details, to Chinese servers, and would accept arbitrary code updates from said servers.

If you wanted to kill a diplomat, muting or spoofing heart rate data while they have a cardiac event in hospital would be a very sneaky way to do it.

Also "medical device" is a broader term than most people realize. For instance: a blood draw or tissue biopsy, followed by DNA sequencing, followed by data analysis, leading to a report for personalized cancer treatment.