Hacker News Reader

Comment by terminalshort | Hacker News Reader

So what you are saying is the majority of the public wants a faster and higher risk option for new drugs, but they should be forced to have a slower and lower risk system because that's what you want? Nobody is talking about selling sugar pills here. That's just simple fraud which always has and always will be illegal.

View on HN

So, yes, you agree the "faster" market will produce a larger quantity of sugar pill fraud because you are so willing to dismiss it as "obvious", yet you won't acknowledge the other kinds of near equivalent fraud such as silver pills, horse dewormers, and more.

Sure, sometimes the FDA is slow to approve drugs that have science behind them. Or from other countries that proved efficacy and safety. But frankly people can already do whatever they want with regards to health. The wellness and alternative medicine industry is larger than the actual pharmaceutical industry. Your fears are unfounded.

No you can't do whatever you want. I have narcolepsy. There is currently a drug in development that is known to work (TAK-861). My doctor is involved in the research. It works so well that in phase 2 trials they couldn't keep them blind because the research subjects know instantly that they got the real medicine. My doctor would have prescribed it to me a year ago if he could. But he couldn't because the worthless bureaucrats at the FDA won't allow him to. I will have to suffer for another year before I can get it because of this bureaucracy. There is ample data published so far to show safety and effectiveness on top of the advice of my doctor. But I can't get it because of these worthless safetyist bureaucrats and their endless process and procedure. I demand to be treated like an adult and be allowed to judge the data for myself and take the risk rather than have the decision made for me by a bunch of government stooges. And on top of that, the drug will be much more expensive than it has to be because Takeda has to spend so much more money developing it. So I lose two ways.

https://www.takeda.com/newsroom/newsreleases/2025/takeda-ore...

> simple fraud which always has and always will be illegal

Wikipedia says homeopathy market was 2.7B in 2007 and I'm too lazy to find new data. AFAIK there has not been issued a single fraud sentence against the manufacturers. That's with a half-functioning FDA that actually made some moves to stop this. Now how bad would it be with no regulation at all? Because, again, there is no doubt that homeopathy has overwhelmingly higher profit margin compared to actual drugs.

I don't want no regulation at all. I want the regulation to stop at ensuring labeling and dosage is correct. Punishment for mislabeling medication should be medieval. If you want to buy snake oil, that's not my problem. What I care about is that the bottle that says snake oil on it actually contains snake oil.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com