Or we could just dissolve it and go back to being responsible for our own outcomes.
The best case scenario is that there is enough market will to allow a lab to monopolize the market, leaving you with the same problems as today but with even less standing in the way of fraud, like companies just paying for good reviews. The realistic case is that no such testing would happen, just like it was before the FDA.
Consumer Reports already exists. https://www.consumerlab.com/ exists.
And the FDA is part of why there is no market for it. Note, for instance, tat the above-mentioned site reviews supplements, which don't have as many restrictions (and which do very much need these kinds of reviews).
> like companies just paying for good reviews
That would conflict with "respected review company", and leave an opportunity for a company that doesn't accept any kind of payment.
Maybe it's reasonable for us to agree that some kinds of oversight are worth funding as a society without waiting for incentives to sprout up out of the ground.
Question: how do you know that this third party is both well-regarded and neutral?
Answer: Read a detailed review from a well-regarded neutral party that conducts laboratory reviews.
Just a small example of why the entire mentality behind "being responsible for our own outcomes" is utter bullshit. You want to be responsible for all your own outcomes, go live on an island by yourself. The rest of us live in a complex society where everyone is interdependent, and where strong governance over the things we depend on for survival is extremely important.
Each of us are responsible for holding others accountable too, as we all currently do with other products.
Someone's pill makes someone grow a third arm, they'll be on John Oliver in no time. And without being able to hide behind "FDA said it's OK" (a la opioid epidemic) they'll feel the full brunt of the consequences.
Soviet-style dumping the power and responsiblity on government bureaus is lazy & stupid vice masquerading as virtue.
Self-responsibility is just a phrase. When elaborated into the idea you have suggested it crumbles. By the time the market corrects industrial causes of human suffering, far too much preventable suffering will have occurred.
Unless you are philosophically indifferent to human suffering your ideas about self-responsibility are empty nonsense. You have no grounds to criticize others for childish sentiments.
That's simply not true, and we have the entire experience of the eastern bloc that's conclusively proven it's not true.
You're simply pretending organisations like the FDA are something they're not, and that they're nothing but good, and all ills must be blamed on private actors. That's picking your conclusion first based on an emotional need to have a warm cozy paternalistic fantasy of a protector government.
Whereas in reality it's the opposite. The rapid innovation of the private sector, driven by consumers who want their suffering alleviated in the fastest and most effective way, is the suffering alleviator. And the slow, obstructive, and competition-free corrupted public sector, the FDA, is the one causing drug innovation costs to be sky high, thereby causing excess deaths and suffering that the private sector would otherwise have been preventing.
You're siding with the baddy and blaming the goodies for his wrongdoing.
Your arguments come from a hypercapitalist fantasy that systemically fails to protect vulnerable populations. Letting market forces satisfy the need of alleviating human suffering is terribly naive nonsense. When the corporations get around to policing themselves, if they do at all, the human toll will be far greater than if we as a society continue to vote for representatives who will reign them in.
You see and comprehend flaws in the current system, but you for some reason cannot see or comprehend that the dumb things you are writing here are much worse.
Bringing up paternalism in this conversation is especially puerile nonsense.
A vote is simply an abdication of responsiblity to people far away, who you don't even know, who don't even have liability if they fail to do as they promised.
I guess you're quite young. You'll learn how the world is eventually. You think you're fighting your own little independent fight, but you're actually just an ant serving a nest you've never seen.
Additionally, we're now under a caveat venditor regime regarding product liability, whereas back then it was caveat emptor. Them being able to say "FDA approved it" lets them dump responsibility too (see opioid epidemic).
Dumping the responsibility on a government bureau, while knowing full well those are on the opposite ends of the spectrums of reliability and innovation versus startups, is completely adsurd.
It's strange that this got such downvoting in such a tech savvy community. You'd think they'd know better.
In what world does Googling for reviews result in accurate, unbiased, independent product information? Can I have some of what you're smoking? (I'll be sure to Google it first.)
The idea is getting a negative response because this is a tech savvy community, everyone here is well aware that Google is an abusive monopoly that's far more concerned with leveraging its market power to line its pockets than it is with delivering accurate information.
I can maybe buy that a free market solution could work for this, but citing Google as an example of a free market... nah, actually, I can't buy it at all. Are we really floating the idea that we don't need an FDA because Consumer Reports could do all the research we need to determine whether drugs are safe after they hit the market?
FDA approves you? Your product gets an FDA sticker. Otherwise, you sell it without one.
Then people could choose how much they care what the FDA thinks. After all, the FDA rubber stamped the opioids. Your friendly local heroin dealer can gives you the same stamp of approval for his poppy based products.
Also prevents the FDA actively killing people by raising the barriers to getting new drugs to them in time. Win win for all (except the FDA I suppose).
Yes, how much of an hassle it is to wade through 90% of crap and fake reviews when shopping for an insignificant mechanical widget or software app in some unfamiliar topic.
Do not want.
If a drug company on the other side of the planet is adulterating the drugs in a way that makes people sick 20 years from now, your bad reviews will show up 20 years too late.
If fly-by-night retailers on Amazon can game the reviews for USB flash drives, you sure as bet that an unregulated pharmaceutical company could.
If you buy from the internet from a fly-by-night based in India because someone on an internet forum said it was good, you can.
If instead you only take what your doctor provides, and pick a doctor who checks independent tests of drugs before prescribing them, you can.
How do you propose that someone who purchases an ibuprofen at a convenience store verify that it is safe, if independent audits are no longer legally required? Where would someone find independent test results? How would they know where it was made?
UL is a better example but it is defacto required by the US legal environment for any serious retailer. And UL/ETL stamps are notoriously faked on imported items. If that was the standard my drugs were made to, I’d avoid imports altogether, and trust only drugs made by a company that can be sued in my local court jurisdiction.