Quote Originally Posted by DuncanONeil View Post
You really believe that the only entity that is honest and ethical is the Government? You actually believe that? Remember that the current Speaker promised the most ethical and honest ever. That really proved to be true!!
You really believe that people would "look at you like you were crazy if you said smoking had negative health effects." Even my father, born in 1901, called them coffin nails! Hence your statement is inaccurate.

Again you assume that they do not engage in due diligence with out thousands of pages of Government regulations? And hundreds of hoops to jump through? Do you think aspirin should be removed from the market? Or Dihydrogenmonoxide?



I believe that the data shows that most of the worlds drug come from American labs. And no I have not checked the figures. Besides there are drugs approved for use in the USofA that have the minor little side effect of DEATH. But essentially you are saying that a drug that exists and shown to have a beneficial effect CAN NOT be used by people in the US under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.



Your subject not mine!!



Short term profits?!?! The drug equivalent of a copyright protects any company from competition for 10 years. You the concept of the greedy evil company is moot. As for one in 20 there are not that many in the country.



If the FDA is voluntary then the choice of the people is not between "good" and "bad" drugs. It is a choice of drugs bearing a seal of approval vs drugs that do not. Heck, do away with the FDA and have somebody like Consumer Reports or UL. Both of whom have a stellar reputation to uphold!
I'm not claiming the government is perfect or reputable. I'm saying that they can better set standards for testing of drugs then the drug companies themselves who have competing interests. Suggesting the drug companies themselves would be able to do a better job at setting the standards would be akin to suggesting the fox should guard the chicken coup.

And yes I believe, with evidence that some powerful individuals in any business take shortcuts for person gain at the expense of others, including customers, other employees and the companies they work for. I'm not saying this is everyone, but it does exist in every business. Unfortunately we need regulations and they need to be enforced. Madoff got reported to the SEC 10 years before they did anything, if they actually bothered to do their jobs a lot of people wouldn't have lost their life savings to a ponzi scheme.

Things like fraud, cooking the books, and other loopholes and exploits happen all the time. People have killed inspectors to protect mining frauds. It happens in all avenues of life a lot of the time. It may only be a small percentage of people in their worst moments, but people do need protection from said individuals.

Do you honestly believe that every single individual who needs to bump up the revenue figures for the quarter or face losing their job would choose to lose the job over releasing a drug that will work and sell, but may have serious side effects? I think history shows that at least some individuals will choose to release the drug and save the job. Only regulations disallowing this choice (need proper testing to be able to release the drug) save us from these individuals. And these individuals are out there even Bush or Cheney referred to them as "a few bad apples".

The fact is there are people who behave badly, many of them very successful. The regulations can be a pain in the ass for those who behave properly 100% of the time, but that doesn't mean they aren't needed. All it takes is one bad decision in one moment of weakness to cause a serious problem. The regulations do a lot to prevent that.

I'm not saying the drug regulations are perfect, they aren't. But just because they have some problems doesn't mean the solution is to scrap them entirely. That would be like saying the problem with Enron is the damn government financial regulations, they should be able to cook their books if they want to.

Your father born in 1901 may have called them coffin nails, but did he call them that with full intent in 1921? My great grandmother was born at a similar time period, and had all sorts of bad things to say about cigarettes later in life. The fact is in the 1920's and 1930's she smoked, and didn't know a thing about the bad effects of cigarettes. That information was not publicly available until much later. Just because someone who was around in 1920 or 1930 says something in 1960 or 1970 about a product doesn't mean they felt that way in 1920 and 1930.