1. Exist as a significant force?
2. Are being stopped by these restrictions?
3. Would do more harm than the FDA promoting ignorance of blood glucose levels?
Because from a comfortable position in an armchair, that perspective seems to be extremely pessimistic about people's ability to make basic life choices. Pessimistic to the point where I don't see how society could function if it is in line with reality.
2. Not stopped from selling stuff which efficacy is not proven. Still stopped from selling stuff which is known dangerous.
3. FDA is just enforcing a CYA policy here. It shifts all decisions to doctors who can decide to prescribe a device or a drug, and are personally accountable for malpractice. No administration wants to lose political points and votes because it allowed something obscure, that something led to an accident, and the accident was turned into a national-level scandal by rage-hungry media.
Pregnancy/HIV/diabetes tests however should be rather easy to define baseline requirements/tolerances for.
And drugs are somewhere in between.
Consequences of any output from audiophile gear are normally not that serious. For a pregnancy test, it could be literally life and death: say, a murder from jealosy, or a suicide from guilt. This makes a strong case for regulation of what can have words "pregnancy test" and synonyms.
I'm fine with people being able to buy stuff that can kill them, be it a gun, a rope, or a substance. But I stand for clear and enforced labeling of such things, regulated proper packaging that prevents accidents, and other such measures that make sure the consumer has plenty of warning, and acts by deliberate choice.
With substances, it's much harder to assess if the thing in hand can kill you, than with a shotgun or a scythe.
Audiophiles salesmen want to believe just as much as the customers.
Disclaimer: Built speakers and amplifiers in a previous life and never understood how people would fret so much about cables.
Dietary supplements, homeopathic "medicine", chiropractic, essential oils, Goop and similar new age stuff ... Snake oil business is thriving and expanding if anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration#H...
I took you up on it regardless, and it doesn't have much to do with snake oil salesmen according to the Wikipedia article.
Either way, nobody is arguing for the abolition of the FDA. The paternalistic attitude and restrictions are what the parent commenters have an issue with.
> By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products that had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, the mascara Lash lure which caused blindness, and worthless "cures" for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through the Congress of the United States for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.
> President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act into law on June 24, 1938.
But again, the issue is not deciding what's safe and what's effective. It's finding that something is effective and then telling citizens they can't use effective treatments (or even tests) arbitrarily.
I'm glad the FDA is testing the safety and effectiveness of tests and cures. That doesn't mean the grandparent commenter who wants to monitor their blood glucose levels should be dismissed.
I'm sure that someone could injure themselves really badly with a glucose monitor, but the risk profile probably isn't that different from the wide range of garden implements we let people run around with (like ladders or hedge clippers).