The FDA - Hazardous to Your Health?

Oh, you had better believe it. Using their own damn numbers this sucker has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and, being that there doesn't seem to be any sort of reform on the horizon, I strongly suspect that we have only scratched the surface...............................................................................................So, why is this shit happening? Three reasons, probably - a) bureaucratic inertia which has radically lengthened the amount of time that it takes for a drug to get to market (it's gone from 2 to 3 years to 10 years), b) high costs (predominantly brought about by government regulation) which now make it almost impossible for a smaller company to patent and market a new drug, and c) a borderline paranoiac adherence to the precautionary principle in which these assholes are so afraid of committing a Type 1 error that they are now making Type 2 errors straight up the poop-shoot...............................................................................................Now, this isn't to say that we should be getting rid of the FDA completely in that we probably do need a certain amount of oversight. But this whole bullshit of perpetually keeping drugs off the market, many of which have already been approved in other countries (and, yes, I'm talking European countries here), is something that has to stop and quickly.