Hacker News Reader

"mostly meaningless" is an overstatement. The FDA oversees a lot of drug applications and gets it right a vast majority of the time. No human endeavor is perfect; if there's evidence that 20% of approvals are wrong then I'll agree that there's a problem.

View on HN

>No human endeavor is perfect

This should be posted to the front page of the site. I get so tired of seeing comments pointing out some flaw in an institution and concluding that the institution is therefore useless. It really is lazy thinking.

I think the point is more about putting "authority" into perspective.

It is also lazy thinking to say that since it is approved by an institution it must be good.

One third of all FDA approved drugs from 2001 to 2010 were pulled from the market post-approval.

So it’s not 20%. It’s a third.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com