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Comment by ramanujan | Hacker News Reader

The FDA is not underfunded. Its budget has more than doubled from 2006 to 2011:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/11/nation/la-na-fda-bud...

When a business fails, its budget is cut as customers leave it in droves for other businesses. But when the FDA fails, the idea is to throw more money at it, to increase the budget of a failure.

The problem is that the FDA is a monopoly. When it fails, which happens routinely, people should be able to look to alternate reviewers -- like the European or Japanese regulatory bodies. That doesn't happen right now.

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What alternative do you propose to prevent drug companies from marketing unsafe or ineffective drugs?

Yes, things could be improved, but taking apart the FDA isn't, IMO, a solution.

>The FDA is not underfunded. Its budget has more than doubled from 2006 to 2011:

How much does it need to do its job? Has the amount of work stayed constant between 2006-2011? Was it properly funded in 2006?

It needs zero because the market will provide these services. Or if it doesn't it would be clear that consumers didn't want these services.

Why would the market provide these services?

We could start to pay a company to tell us which drugs were safe, but they would only have one customer who would tell everybody else.

I'm not convinced it would actually work, but what the OP probably meant is that the pharma companies would pay the certification companies so they could put a "Certified by X" sticker on their packaging. The better X would certify, the more they could ask from the pharma company, so the market would reward proper certification.

Erm... that's just the same as it is now. Pharma companies pay scientists to statistically test there products. My first year stats professor described how difficult it is to say to your employer after a year and a lot of cash that their toothpaste did not perform statistically significantly better than the placebo. How many more consultancy contracts are you going to get?

Only provided that it's more profitable to provide consumers with clear information than to sell dangerous drugs.

That's one perspective. Here's another:

[ScienceBasedMedicine.org](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-free-speec...)

Why can't we have both?

I'll accept the FDA wasting money, and in exchange I don't have to listen to them. The fact that homeopathy can be branded medicine virtually eliminates any point in having the FDA with regard to drug efficacy / safety.

Homeopathy can be branded as safe -- which it is. After all, it's just water. I don't think it's branded as an effective medicine -- there are things you aren't allowed to say on the packaging if you've only been certified as harmless.

The drug market will never provide accurate safety information on its own. This was the reason why regulation was sought in the first place. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_medicine

The market? You're kidding right? Us consumers can't make a clear decision if we don't have all the facts. How long did it take the tobacco companies to admit that smoking was bad for us? How many lawsuits?

The market does nothing except exploit. Now nothing wrong with that.. but the idea of a free and open market in America hasn't been true since.. well.. 1980?

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