Originally posted by KazetNagorra
It seems we have found some common ground here. The unregulated sale of blatantly fraudulent products such as anti-wrinkle cream or homeopathic medicine has annoyed me for quite some time. These sort of products, which advertise some kind of effect which has not been scientifically established should come with a warning label at the very least.
You say homeopathic medicines annoy you, but to do the sort of research required to generate FDA-approved labels for safety and efficacy costs hundreds of millions of dollars -- which means that only companies with huge bankrolls can participate. I assume that annoys you, too?
It certainly drives up costs because it limits competition among medications -- and incidentally ensures that only "Big Market" diseases get attention. Heck, companies stopped producing vaccines a few years ago because they were not profitable enough. and medical services had to ration tetanus boosters.
Patients have very individualized responses to medications. Some people get huge benefits from sugar pills (i.e. placebo effect). And for EVERY medication I guarantee there is someone out there who will take it and keel over. There is no such thing as a "universally safe" medication. As an example, there was a girl -- I forget where -- who was allergic to water!* So if you test a large enough population, you will determine that every drug ever produced is unsafe.
And by the way, food products like table sugar or anything alcoholic? If you were going for approval today -- forget it. You'd never be allowed to sell them.
So what I want is for companies to go after that sort of information. Greater understanding of what their customers want -- who benefits, who doesn't. I don't want companies to waste time standing around waiting for the government to tell them what to do -- because they government is notoriously inept at this sort of investigation.
Let the free market do what it does best -- give people what they want.
*aquagenic pruritis