Threat in Your Medicine Cabinet: The FDA's Gamble on America's Drugs

I respect doctors (and people in general), but I don’t give the medical profession a passing grade. To speak in generalities (there are exceptions), their training is somewhat insane: long hours, sleep deprivation, knowledge cramming, and more. Their daily practice leaves little time or incentive for keeping up with studies. Most were not adequately taught statistics in the first place. To vent a bit more, I don’t think it is unfair to say the system is crap. If we could redesign it from scratch, understanding human nature, how people learn, and the need for ongoing learning, and evidence-based medicine, it would not be this. None of this is meant to assign blame to individuals.

I have plenty of criticisms for the physicians lobby in the US, but kind of agree this is one area where I'm not sure the problems lie in physicians (outside of some very general sense that they tend to be in key positions of influence in healthcare systems in government and elsewhere).

I do think it's a good example of why pharmacists should maybe have more power in the drug prescription process, and also wonder why insurance companies or pharmacies don't ban drugs from certain places and/or sue them themselves more often.

The drug you mentioned had a reputation for these sorts of problems.

You can figure out the generic manufacturer by matching the active ingredient with the pill shape, color, and imprints on a pill identification website. Finding the exact factory of that manufacturer is much harder though.

The US is long past the point where we need to stop talking about medical regulation generically. Some regulation and enforcement needs to be increased, and others need to be decreased or eliminated, at least in my opinion.

To me this sort of thing is fraud, and I feel like the FDA needs more resources and oversight to fight it. But with other things I think the FDA needs to back off completely, where it's overstepped its useful mission. I personally would like to see the FDA stop telling people what they can purchase or receive from whom, but spend more time guaranteeing that whatever is on the label is what it says it is and nothing else.

How did you arrive at that conclusion? All of the evidence provided in the article is prior to the “freedom of regulation” as you call it.

To me, it’s indicative of a rotting regulatory institution that lost its way. FDA is about safety, not low cost drugs. I don’t know how that mandate became mission critical for them but it happened before the current administration.

Yes. This is a clear example of why that's bad and why these agencies need funding and competent staffing.

I’m pretty sure one party’s people does want to be poisoned, given the consistent advocacy for reduced pollution controls and such.

> Neither's parties people wants to be poisoned.

Voters for one party keep taking horse medicine and we can't seem to stop them when they experience negative side effects, and we couldn't get them to get vaccines even as their friends and loved ones were dying begging for it at the last minute. There's definitely a party divide here.

Capitalism cannot exist without regulation. There is no such thing as a "free market". Capitalism relies upon regulation to enforce the enclosures it builds. Regulations are a direct product to protect profits.

For example, Medicare is prohibited from negotiating prices with drug companies for most medications. A few exceptions were carved out with the IRA passed under Biden. The VA can it pays a lot less. Why is Medicare forbidden from negotiating? Because the pharma industry lobbied for it.

Also, cheaper generics are banned from being imported even though you can buy the exact same thing for a 95%+ discount in Canada.

To see this regulation in action, you can pretty accurately predict what courts and the government will do by simply asking "what do the capital owners want?".

Just this weekend, we had an actual domestic terrorist in Minnesota kill a state lawmaker (and her husband) and attempt to kill at least one other. So far he's been charged with second-degree murder and some federal charges [1].

Now compare this to Luigi, the alleged shooter of UHC CEO Brian Thompson where the AG and US attorney immediately came out calling for the death penalty and laying first-degree murder and terrorism charges on him.

Now maybe the federal or state charges will be upgraded to first-degree but there's none of the same rhetoric about an actual terrorist. Ask yourself why.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/vance-boelter-fbi-det...