The FDA doesn’t prevent snake oil salesmen: various kinds of alternative medicine escape regulation. It seems regulation primarily applies to treatments that might actually have a hope in hell of working.
Are you considering the other side of the ledger? The people deprived of potentially life saving new treatments because they have not yet been approved? The innovative new medical companies that never get started because of the barriers to entry formed by the regulatory agencies and the big pharmaceutical companies who know how to navigate their rules? The new treatments for rare diseases that are never developed because the market is too small to justify the costs of gaining regulatory approval? The effective anti-venoms already used successfully in other countries that are not available to treat rare snake bites in the US because FDA approval is too onerous?
The FDA doesn’t even have a perfect track record achieving its stated aims. As with any large government agency, private alternatives would be more cost effective and better at the job.
Alternative medicine used to be much more closely regulated. A lot of these products were more closely regulated until lobbying by the alternative medicine industry lead to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 which made it much harder for the FDA to regulate them.
The FDA doesn’t prevent snake oil salesmen: various kinds of alternative medicine escape regulation. It seems regulation primarily applies to treatments that might actually have a hope in hell of working.
Are you considering the other side of the ledger? The people deprived of potentially life saving new treatments because they have not yet been approved? The innovative new medical companies that never get started because of the barriers to entry formed by the regulatory agencies and the big pharmaceutical companies who know how to navigate their rules? The new treatments for rare diseases that are never developed because the market is too small to justify the costs of gaining regulatory approval? The effective anti-venoms already used successfully in other countries that are not available to treat rare snake bites in the US because FDA approval is too onerous?
The FDA doesn’t even have a perfect track record achieving its stated aims. As with any large government agency, private alternatives would be more cost effective and better at the job.
Alternative medicine used to be much more closely regulated. A lot of these products were more closely regulated until lobbying by the alternative medicine industry lead to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 which made it much harder for the FDA to regulate them.