Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Epstein on The FDA

Noted legal scholar Richard Epstein has a harsh critique of the FDA at, "A Taste of Government-Run Healthcare".

In particular he notes:
...As the educated cynic might observe, the FDA’s fingerprints are not on the death certificate of a child who did not take the drug that the FDA refused to approve, but those prints are quite clearly on the death certificate of a child who died from the use of an FDA-approved drug. The result is the same kind of intense political pressure that affects other safety agencies. It leads the FDA to increase one kind of error (the unavailability of drugs) in order to minimize a second (adverse drug reactions).
(Read the full text of "A Taste of Government-Run Healthcare".)

He further discusses how FDA regulations impede medical progress and endanger patients' lives.  Although Epstein doesn't advocate completely eliminating the FDA (which should be the proper endpoint), he does recommend several good partial steps that would move us in the right direction.

(Via Instapundit.)