They also would like it if occasionally everyone reviewed legislation in light of whether it actually had a positive cost-benefit. The claim has to be something significantly more valuable than a few 100 people dying from poisons each year for the thousands to millions of deaths caused by inefficiencies in the biomedical industry. 3,000,000 people die in the US each year right now. Optimising the medical system for nimbleness and low costs is a much better path to take rather than optimising for something that is presented as a statistical rounding error.

If people don't think a drug manufacturer is safe they don't have to buy drugs from them.

> The claim has to be something significantly more valuable than a few 100 people dying from poisons each year for the thousands to millions of deaths caused by inefficiencies in the biomedical industry.

It's extremely misleading to argue with confidence that even a significant fraction of those thousands to millions of deaths would be prevented if only we had the good sense to eliminate medical regulations entirely and that doing so would only result in a few hundred deaths.

It's not just about poisoning deaths from toxic medicine -- it's also about additional deaths from people taking snake oil treatments over proven effective treatments. If the US response to COVID shows us anything, it's that this latter group can be quite significant.

A big problem that's led us to where we are is that many in the right wing fringes that brought us the current administration make their fortunes off selling snake oils in the form of supplements. And while I'm sure some will immediately point out that left wing fringes have their own bullshit cures (e.g., essential oils, healing crystals, etc.), the difference is that this group is still treated as the kooks they are.

I remember the Tylenol hysteria (in the 1980's?) when there were a few poisonings.

It may well be that the legitimate drug manufacturers benefit from tight regulation by the FDA. They can give them legitimacy when the public may otherwise overreact.

I'm not sure an anything-goes environment is going to be something they're going to enjoy. Oh well.

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