I have a right to choose what I put in my body.^ Companies that make drugs have a right to sell what they make, as long as they don't lie or defraud me. Simply by doing what it was created to do, the FDA is violating my rights as a patient, as well as the rights of all of those whose rights give rise to the drug companies (i.e., employees and shareholders).<p>Suppose that a new regulation passed that eliminated off-label prescriptions. Many will agree that the suffering and death that would result would be immense. (Just ask anyone who has a friend or relative that's benefited from an off-label drug.) Yet off-label prescriptions fly in the face of what the FDA does. What's going on here?<p>What we choose to do when we're sick ultimately rests on each of us, individually. We all <i>need</i> to be free to do the research ourselves <i>or</i> to delegate this responsibility to whomever each of us has trust in (a particular doctor, for example). <i>The inevitable consequence of losing this freedom is that far more of us suffer and die today than would otherwise.</i><p>The valid function of the FDA (valid insofar as it is a source of scientific information) should be performed by a private organization like Consumer Reports, which has a great deal of authority, but is completely independent of both companies <i>and</i> the government. Consumer Reports doesn't use violence or the threat of violence to back itself up: the <i>one</i> thing that keeps it in business is trust.<p>Certainly, Consumer Reports doesn't offer its products or services for gratis. But many people find the service valuable enough to pay, and with our bodies, the stakes are much higher. Most people will pay for such a drug-vetting service, either directly or through the professional they delegate health decisions to.<p>We all want safe drugs, and the market is capable of producing and selling safe drugs to us. All we need is to be left free (meaning that the government does one thing only: prevent force and fraud), and verification organizations that pride themselves on true independence will arise.<p>^This right over your own body really is absolute (so long as you're not hurting someone else). I don't use or advocate for the <i>use</i> of illegal drugs, but it really is no one's business but your own. Yaron Brook recently summed it up best when he said, "You know you're in trouble when you declare war on inanimate objects."
I dont understand. If the FDA wants to incentivize private companies to update the research on old drugs, why dont they just pay them to do it (AND not make the payment contingent on finding the drug marketable as this appears to do)? Obviously nobody knows the true value of new research on old drugs, but giving private companies blank checks to insurer's bank accounts doesnt seem like the best method to go about it.
One of the things that Indian law got right was its older patent law on drugs. The way it used to work was this: you could patent the <i>process</i> of making a particular drug, not the chemical composition of the drug itself. If you could build the same or a better product for cheap using a different process, good for you, and good for everybody else. In most other fields that would be called innovation and good entrepreneurship. I think the main if not the principal point of IP laws is to encourage innovation, technological advance and entrepreneurship.<p>Unfortunately the older market leveling laws rub a significantly large class of free-market proponents the wrong way, at least the most vocal and politically relevant ones.<p>But back to the laws, a popular counterargument has been that the existing laws encourage research whereas the older ones did not. I used to be sold on that line of reasoning till my exposure to the conduct of drug development and research. In US they are almost always always government funded.
This reminds me of albuterol for asthema. I used to get it generic for $4. Now its $45+ with my insurance, since its no longer available as a generic.<p>I now have to purchase Ventolin, which is no different medication wise, just the inhaler is different.
Another example of this was Colchicine as an HN'er mentioned here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2263969" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2263969</a>