I think the FDA and other regulatory bodies are critically important, market economies don’t work well for medicine and that surgery is not a great comparator. Here are some scattered thoughts
Surgery outcomes generally have short feedback loops. With medication, it can take years to understand potential harms, with surgery you usually know quickly whether outcomes are good or bad. The classic example of unexpected harms with a long feedback loop is Thalidomide, which caused severe birth defects in tens of thousands of babies. Regulation tightened up after this and we haven’t had a similar scale problem since
The medical field is built on trust. The general public expect that there has been a hypervigilant, rigorous process that ensures they are very likely to gain benefit from medication, but more importantly that the chance of catastrophic negative results is as close to zero as possible. This ensures we get vaccinated, go to doctors and take medication which increases the quality of our lives.
The second order and potentially catastrophic negative effects to harm-causing medications slipping through less regulation could also be immense. I think if a similar issue to thalidomide happened now, there could be a wholescale breakdown of trust in the medical field in generalwhich could lead to delays in seeking medical care, drops in vaccine rates around the world and increase in predatory non evidence-based predatory medical providers.
I won’t get into the weeds of why treating medicine as a regular commodity in the market can lead to disaster, but the obvious example is the opioid crisis in the U.S.A. The market-friendly policies allowed heavy marketing of opioid medication both to patients and doctors (most countries in the world don’t allow this) which, along with poor regulation of doctor prescription practises (and a bunch of other reasons) contributed to the U.S.A being one of the first high income countries in the world to have a reduction in life expectancy.
Sure there might be some people (like you) that are willing to take higher risks with medication to perhaps get higher rewards, but I don’t think its a good idea to design our system around a minority of people who are willing to ride the lightening, when most people want a close to failsafe system with far less risk and less reward.
These are just a few thoughts, there are other important functions like good oversight of clinical trials and monitoring of side effects which I won’t weigh into here. I don’t know much about the FDA in its current form, and I’m sure there’s plenty of room for improvement, but the potential downsides of doing away with medical regulators seem to outweigh the potential benefits of faster and cheaper medication.
I think the FDA and other regulatory bodies are critically important, market economies don’t work well for medicine and that surgery is not a great comparator. Here are some scattered thoughts
Surgery outcomes generally have short feedback loops. With medication, it can take years to understand potential harms, with surgery you usually know quickly whether outcomes are good or bad. The classic example of unexpected harms with a long feedback loop is Thalidomide, which caused severe birth defects in tens of thousands of babies. Regulation tightened up after this and we haven’t had a similar scale problem since
The medical field is built on trust. The general public expect that there has been a hypervigilant, rigorous process that ensures they are very likely to gain benefit from medication, but more importantly that the chance of catastrophic negative results is as close to zero as possible. This ensures we get vaccinated, go to doctors and take medication which increases the quality of our lives.
The second order and potentially catastrophic negative effects to harm-causing medications slipping through less regulation could also be immense. I think if a similar issue to thalidomide happened now, there could be a wholescale breakdown of trust in the medical field in general which could lead to delays in seeking medical care, drops in vaccine rates around the world and increase in predatory non evidence-based predatory medical providers.
I won’t get into the weeds of why treating medicine as a regular commodity in the market can lead to disaster, but the obvious example is the opioid crisis in the U.S.A. The market-friendly policies allowed heavy marketing of opioid medication both to patients and doctors (most countries in the world don’t allow this) which, along with poor regulation of doctor prescription practises (and a bunch of other reasons) contributed to the U.S.A being one of the first high income countries in the world to have a reduction in life expectancy.
Sure there might be some people (like you) that are willing to take higher risks with medication to perhaps get higher rewards, but I don’t think its a good idea to design our system around a minority of people who are willing to ride the lightening, when most people want a close to failsafe system with far less risk and less reward.
These are just a few thoughts, there are other important functions like good oversight of clinical trials and monitoring of side effects which I won’t weigh into here. I don’t know much about the FDA in its current form, and I’m sure there’s plenty of room for improvement, but the potential downsides of doing away with medical regulators seem to outweigh the potential benefits of faster and cheaper medication.