i know this is a very political thing now but i've had friends (smart phd people who work industry) very annoyed at the fda for many years, and maybe this collapse is good!

the fda started with a noble mission but they've been getting heavy handed. or better cliched - slow handed with getting things certified.

you can solve this one or two ways: drop regulation or increase staffing.

so many institutions have unnecessary fluff, tremendous red tape (why do i need environmental review to stick a shed in my backyard??), our modern lives have too much regulation.

let's hope for the best.

the old system is holding back drugs.. there should have been more ozempics, more breakthroughs had the fda not been so slow. companies have a strong incentive not release bad drugs now.. lawyers are not cheap and law firms know money can be made.. it's not the 1930s anymore.. (okay it's still the 1930s in certain places of the world, that's a criticism)

typing this out hoping to convince any regulation reduction is good reduction, i thought of a third fda option: the fda let's everyone go hog wild initially but looks at the top consumed products and checks them for safety and efficacy each year.

▲

KaiserPro 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> why do i need environmental review to stick a shed in my backyard??

Because cowboys make cowboy decisions, which leads to loss of lives.

"We're going to build on a flood plane, don't worry we've put in protection" turns out they didnt and the things they did made the flooding worse.

> companies have a strong incentive not release bad drugs now

Given that fentanyl exists and managed to get through, and was widely prescribed by doctors, and the whole industry setup to encourage prescription, I think thats not really true. Its not even like its that effective as a pain relief (https://www.bjanaesthesia.org/article/S0007-0912(17)37428-7/...)

▲

LorenPechtel 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fentanyl is not a bad drug.

It's deadly *on the street* because of it's tendency to clump, meaning that your average drug dealer is not competent to dilute it properly. That's not a problem when handled by professionals.

	▲	KaiserPro 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		my friend, opiods out of acute settings are super bad. Being prescribed opiods to take home, is a sure fire way to get someone addicted https://www.gov.uk/drug-safety-update/opioids-risk-of-depend... What is even more bad is companies running competitions to encourage family doctors prescribe opiods for long term use. sure heroin on the streets is bad, don't get me wrong, but giving it to unsuspecting patients, getting them addicted and then effectively forcing them onto the streets is even worse. Advertising of drugs is fucking stupid, bribing doctors is even more stupid. But as thats where a lot of money comes for politics, its not going to change.

▲

mistrial9 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

so cowboys meet Darwin and their population drops. An alternative is a "nanny state" where every personal choice must pass regulation. This is as old as the hills, but add new abilities to monitor for compliance at scale; new orders of magnitude advantages for certain high-tech; and new amounts of money in an active and massive economic system.

Without prescribing any solution here, is it that much of a stretch to think that the FDA in practice exhibited dysfunctional characteristics in markets? With the longevity of the players and the deep pockets associated with health care, is it a stretch to see large changes to the institution as constructive in the long-run?

▲

nosianu 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you would give a balanced PoV you would not only count the good drugs that could have been, but also list all the bad ones that were fortunately prevented from being released on the public. If you only list one side, your argument is missing something essential. Loosening regulations has an effect not only on drugs that turn out to be very net positive, we will also see more bad ones. Now I'm just waiting for someone to point out that all we need is perfect regulation that exactly lets through all the good ones and filters all the bad ones....

▲

watwut 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I will go further. In the snake oil market, trying to produce actually good novel drugs is a loosing strategy. You wont be selling more, because you will have exactly the same footing as those who just lie and exaggerate over their results. Except they will have more funds to spread those lies and to convince people, because they did not wasted money on research.

▲

ineedaj0b 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

some drug are moneymakers. lots of people can take them. viagra was that or now ozempic etc. but there's lots of novel drugs that never get past testing because they cost too much or the market too small to recover profit.

these studies struggle to find candidates, the testers rarely have serious side effects, so i think on the net this will not cause the harm you worry.

however! i would be worried taking new broad market drugs post any fda collapse.. but there's fewer of those on average. and pharma companies compete on efficacy and side effects and love to show investors results. so mixed bag.

we play it too safe. ozempic will save many many lives. if it had been approved years earlier it would have saved many many more. waiting for perfect is what the current system feels like, and seems like something you also know is foolish.

18 studies. only 6 novel. not a healthy ecosystem imo

	▲	IAmBroom 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		More of your "lots", "rarely", "fewer"... but zero actual data at all. Two large posts of your opinion, and no information to back it up.

▲

6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

shadowgovt 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People tend to be annoyed by things they interact with frequently.

I get annoyed by web development, but I wouldn't want to see the solution be a federally mandated burning to the ground of the HTML standard.

▲

terminalshort 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Would you like to see a HTML standard imposed by law and that takes years and billions of dollars to amend? I don't think you would like that either. If I had to choose between the two, I'll take the wild west no standard option.

	▲	shadowgovt 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You're asking me if I, as a full-time web developer, would like to see an HTML standard that is incredibly expensive to modify? A standard that could be relied upon to be bedrock atop which you could build frameworks and polyfill to bridge any arbitrary issue you may encounter between the underlying interface and the developer's interface, for years if not decades? A concrete, unyielding standard the browser implementers could forever optimize towards, confident their optimizations won't run afoul of a change to the standard coming down the pipe, or an entirely new feature in the standard that demands novel support at the cost of breaking abstractions that supported the existing standard? ... is there, like, a change.org petition I can sign in favor of this? ;)

▲

awanderingmind 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This perspective is addressed in the article... TLDR; that doesn't seem to be where this is going.