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Author Topic: Democrats at least pretend to have a spine, it's a Christmas miracle!
fugu13
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I don't know, as I've said. I can point to tens of millions (at least) of lives saved, and hundreds of millions of lives greatly improved by the elimination of the FDA at some point in the past, no problem; it doesn't take many wonder drugs to do that, and while they only come along now and then, that's all it takes. Of course, the pace of drug discovery has slowed down, so the rate at which such blockbuster medicines will continue to come out has slowed down.

Conversely, I doubt that more than hundreds of thousands of people have been severely harmed (and fewer killed) by the current acts of unregulated parts of the 'medicinal' industry. So the question becomes how much that increases, and the other side decreases. I think you're being rather alarmist, projecting a very different time into today. Alternative medicines and treatments today, even completely unregulated ones, largely aren't harmful (just ineffectual). There are numerous well-trained physicians to serve as gatekeepers and mediators of the use of many medicines; they aren't impossible to fool or sway, but neither are they dupes. I don't doubt (as I've said before) the problem would increase; the question remains, how much?

I suspect that, on the whole, an eliminated or greatly reduced FDA (perhaps voluntary certifications of some kind, in addition to a testing and policing role) in combination with a vast expansion of medical fraud legislation, would improve welfare. That's nothing more than a vague suspicion, though; it would require substantially more study before I would even begin to call it a position.

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Destineer
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quote:
I don't know, as I've said. I can point to tens of millions (at least) of lives saved, and hundreds of millions of lives greatly improved by the elimination of the FDA at some point in the past, no problem;
Is that really right? As Samp points out, if the FDA weren't there it would be harder to get good information about which drugs were effective. So perhaps news of the wonder drugs' effectiveness would not have reached the consumers much faster than it actually did.

It seems to me that under the system you're suggesting, doctors would likely become extremely cautious about recommending or prescribing new medicines. Especially after a couple of (near-inevitable) bad experiences with untried drugs harming their patients.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
I don't know, as I've said. I can point to tens of millions (at least) of lives saved, and hundreds of millions of lives greatly improved by the elimination of the FDA at some point in the past, no problem

Tens of millions, no problem? From what?
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Ron Lambert
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There was a proven anti-cold medication produced by Viropharma, Pleconaril (also called Picovir) which passed all three phases of its trials successfully and was shown to shorten the duration of viral colds, and also had effectiveness against a wide variety of other viruses, which was denied approval by the FDA in 2001, because in some cases it might neutralize the effectiveness of some birth control pills.

Pleconaril worked by binding to the sites on the outer protein capsule of viruses which they use to anchor themselves to cells (like keys in a keyhole) in order to infect the cells. Many people, including most scientists and medical professionals, were enthusiastic that a cure for the common cold had finally been found. But the FDA did not want to chance having anyone's contraceptives be deactivated (never mind that warnings could be printed on the label, and other methods of contraception exist). The FDA judges (mostly Clinton appointees, natch) apparently didn't want to spoil anyone's fun, least of all their own.

That same year that the true cure for the common cold was rejected, the utterly worthless product, Zicam, was approved. As a HOMEOPATHIC medicine, which means it was not really medicine at all, just a folk remedy. Zicam wasn't even that. Its lab trials were inconclusive, and the results were given a favorable spin by a researcher in the pay of the manufacturer. It grates on me every time I see a Zicam commercial. We got this worthless snakeoil instead of a genuine medicine that worked on a sound, scientific basis, and was proven in human trials to shorten the duration of colds by one to several days, and often prevented them when taken early enough.

[ December 24, 2010, 01:41 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]

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TomDavidson
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Zicam has not actually been approved by the FDA as any sort of medicine at all, Ron. The FDA does not approve or reject things claiming to be "homopathic medicine," but only steps in to explicitly ban such "medicines" that they believe have been proven harmful -- like, actually, three Zicam intranasal remedies that they had pulled off the market last year.
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rivka
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And Pleconaril has been denied approval based on safety concerns (notably, heart issues), NOT (solely) your conspiracy-theory reasons. (Puh-leeeez. Quite a few antibiotics neutralize BC pills. Get a grip.)

And "cure for the common cold" is a HUGE overstatement. It helped people's colds go away faster. That's hardly the same thing.

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Ron Lambert
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Zicam had to have FDA approval in order to be marketed. Not as a medicine in the usual sense. But even as homeopathic quakery, it had to be approved for general sale to the public. Zicam's trail results did have to be submitted for consideration. The bar, of course, is set very low for things that claim to be homeopathic remedies.

What was cited by the FDA judges as the reason for their action to refuse to allow Pleconaril on the market was the possibility of lawsuits for "wrongful pregnancies." Plenty of medicines can have complications for heart patients, and are still on the market today, with due notification. The main proviso is that they are available on a prescription basis only. But Pleconaril was going to be available on a prescription basis.

And yes, Rivka, it was truly the cure for the common cold. That is not an overstatement at all. Pleconaril was the first ever medicine that actually attacked the mechanism by which picornaviruses infect cells. It also (This is Very Important) substantially reduced the time during which a person with a cold was infectious, since any viruses still being shed were deactivated--which had huge potential benefits for preventing the spread of colds in the workplace and in schools. The clinical trial with humans also showed that if Pleconaril were taken soon after exposure to cold viruses, before symptoms began to manifest, the cold might be prevented entirely. It was in many test subjects. While the minimum shortening of the duration of a cold was only one day among all the test subjects, many had the duration of the cold shortened by three or even more days. And like I said, once test subjects began taking Pleconaril, they almost immediately ceased being contagious. Think of the lost productivity that could have been saved nationwide! Not to mention the benefits to kids in school (schools these days should be listed as official disease vectors).

The debacle concerning Pleconaril is the worst failure of the FDA in that institution's history, and shows clearly the serious harm that misguided PC-type thinking does to us all. The strange refusal of some people to face up to the seriousness of this failure certainly does not help matters any, since if the lessons that should be learned are not learned, then such errors will continue to be made.

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Darth_Mauve
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Ron, the bar is so low for food additives, which is what homeopathic quackery is considered, as to make it useless. For it Not to be approved someone must PROVE that it does harm. That someone is not the FDA or the manufacturer, but what ever victims and their families survive to make the case.

And even then the company can argue about it.

I do not know the story of Pleconaril. However I usually try to get my information from one source, so until I research it I will have to say the FDA is doing a better job than not having an FDA around.

Drug companies are companies.

Companies are sociopathic. For the most part they do not try to do good, or to do harm. They only try to make money.

Doctors on their own do not have the time, the energy, the resources or the calling to double check every new drug that some advertiser shoves in their face. Right now Billions of dollars, about 10 times the research budget, are being spent to sell doctors on new medicines.

Saying the removing the FDA because they like to make sure the science is good before allowing possible poisons on the market is a going to somehow enable my family doctor to know not only which medicine I should take, but which of the promised miracle cures the rep is paying him to use is the best based solely on the research of the manufacturer is hard to swallow. Sorry for the big sentence.

If I have a million, I can make a drug called Darthia. It costs me $50,000 to manufacture. I spend $50,000 to buy some scientist to tell me it works. I then spend $500,000 on advertising--drug reps to bribe, coerce, sleep with, or convince doctors int he region that Darthia is great for relieving migraine headaches. $400,000 is on retainer to pay for any issues that come up--law suits, etc. At $5 a pill, I get ten thousand people to get 100 pills and I've made $4 Million in profit.

Right now, this same thing is happening, but instead of the $50,000 to buy someone to say your drug is good, you actually have to make a good drug.

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rivka
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Might =! CURE [Roll Eyes]

But hey, don't let me interfere with your conspiracy theory of the week.

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Jon Boy
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I've found that it's pretty much impossible to interfere with someone's conspiracy theory of the week.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
And yes, Rivka, it was truly the cure for the common cold. That is not an overstatement at all.

What? No. It's absolutely an overstatement. It's not a cure; you'll still go through a cold's full stages even if you start taking it at the absolute onset of symptoms.

But, .. you've taken the position that it is, so there's an excruciatingly minimal chance you can be corrected, I guess?

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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon Boy:
I've found that it's pretty much impossible to interfere with someone's conspiracy theory of the week.

But . . . but . . . !
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dabbler
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If anyone would like to see the full background information used by the FDA to decide on that med, it is here
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Ron Lambert
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I was an investor in Viropharma at the time when Pleconaril was rejected by the FDA, and the stock price tanked, so I am very well acquainted with the situation.

Darth, I do not advocate eliminating the FDA. For the most part, it does a decent job. I am just saying in this one case involving Pleconaril, PC-type thinking denied all of us something that could have been of great benefit to society.

That is a good observation, where you said that most companies are sociopathic.

One of the really good things the FDA did was refuse to allow Thalidomide to be approved for general use in the USA, even though it was commonly being used already in Europe. A few women obtained the drug anyway, and regretted it, when they joined with many European mothers in having seriously deformed babies. I think it was mainly one woman who was responsible for blocking approval of Thalidomide. She said she did it mainly on a hunch, and took a lot of criticism for it at first. In her case, she went against PC thinking, at least in terms of the example set by Europeans.

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Rakeesh
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quote:
I was an investor in Viropharma at the time when Pleconaril was rejected by the FDA, and the stock price tanked, so I am very well acquainted with the situation.
So you probably lost a bit of money, therefore clouding your objectivity on the matter. But let's not discuss that when examining such statements as 'truly a cure for the common cold', oh, heavens no.
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by dabbler:
If anyone would like to see the full background information used by the FDA to decide on that med, it is here

Thanks. That was interesting.
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dabbler
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Ron, while you state that you were well acquainted, I wonder if your information came from the company press releases and journalists' enthusiastic but not scientific articles about the topic. If you have read the backgrounder, great. But if not, I suggest you do in order to actually embrace more knowledge than say you're above it.
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Ron Lambert
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Since Pleconaril was the only medicine actually to affect the mechanism by which picornaviruses attach to cells and infect them, it was truly a cure for the common cold. Not a mere treatment for symptoms, not a mere snakeoil homeopathic remedy that does nothing like Zicam, but an actual treatment that worked. In clinical trials it did reduce the average length of colds for everyone, by at least a day, in many cases more. And it stopped an infected person from being contagious almost immediately, since all the virus shed after taking Pleconaril were deactivated. Pleconaril was formulated using various substances already established as being harmless for humans. It passed its first and second clinical trials with flying colors. All the controversy involves the third clinical trial, with humans. There is no question that the drug did what it was claimed to do. The only questions that arose were side effects for some people. The real reason it was rejected was the possibility that it could neutralize some birth control medications. Everything else was just window-dressing added to make it look like the real reason wasn't the real reason.

I followed the stock and the drug through its clinical trials for over two years. When I saw that Viropharma was going to make a presentation about Pleconaril at a large conference of medical professionals, I purchased more of the stock, and made a profit a couple of days later when the stock went up at about 12 percent, due to the reaction of the people at the conference.

I was certainly disappointed by the FDA's final refusal to approve Pleconaril, and did not appreciate losing money. But I was also motivated far more than most people to keep abreast of all the discussions among investors about it, and read through the official reports (including reading between the lines which you have to do with government-speak and business-speak).

At least I can say that I cut my losses by selling my shares immediately. Some people indulged in a bit of denial, and held onto the stock for a few more days, and suffered even worse when the stock price was halved again.

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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:
I was an investor in Viropharma at the time when Pleconaril was rejected by the FDA, and the stock price tanked, so I am very well acquainted with the situation.
So you probably lost a bit of money, therefore clouding your objectivity on the matter. But let's not discuss that when examining such statements as 'truly a cure for the common cold', oh, heavens no.
I like how Ron assumes that his investment in the company adds to his credibility when making claims about how good a product it had. Sometimes he sounds exactly like I imagine Michael Scott might sound.
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by dabbler:
Ron, while you state that you were well acquainted, I wonder if your information came from the company press releases and journalists' enthusiastic but not scientific articles about the topic.

Bingo.
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Samprimary
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Well, at least I know why Ron considers the delay of approval of picovir the "worst failure of the FDA in that institution's history" — it has to be, as he personally lost money on it.

There is no possible way that there is emotional and exposure bias at play, of course.

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Orincoro
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Well let me tell you samp, I followed the 2008 Presidential elections much more closely than I had ever done before, I read lots about them, did lots of studying, read many analyses and books after the fact, and have been thinking a lot about it, and I can tell you it was the single most important presidential election in our nation's history. [Roll Eyes]

Funny how that works, neh? Ron probably thinks exposure bias means that he is biased because he was exposed to a financial loss.

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Blayne Bradley
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Since Pleconaril was the only medicine actually to affect the mechanism by which picornaviruses attach to cells and infect them, it was truly a cure for the common cold. Not a mere treatment for symptoms, not a mere snakeoil homeopathic remedy that does nothing like Zicam, but an actual treatment that worked. In clinical trials it did reduce the average length of colds for everyone, by at least a day, in many cases more. And it stopped an infected person from being contagious almost immediately, since all the virus shed after taking Pleconaril were deactivated. Pleconaril was formulated using various substances already established as being harmless for humans. It passed its first and second clinical trials with flying colors. All the controversy involves the third clinical trial, with humans. There is no question that the drug did what it was claimed to do. The only questions that arose were side effects for some people. The real reason it was rejected was the possibility that it could neutralize some birth control medications. Everything else was just window-dressing added to make it look like the real reason wasn't the real reason.

I followed the stock and the drug through its clinical trials for over two years. When I saw that Viropharma was going to make a presentation about Pleconaril at a large conference of medical professionals, I purchased more of the stock, and made a profit a couple of days later when the stock went up at about 12 percent, due to the reaction of the people at the conference.

I was certainly disappointed by the FDA's final refusal to approve Pleconaril, and did not appreciate losing money. But I was also motivated far more than most people to keep abreast of all the discussions among investors about it, and read through the official reports (including reading between the lines which you have to do with government-speak and business-speak).

At least I can say that I cut my losses by selling my shares immediately. Some people indulged in a bit of denial, and held onto the stock for a few more days, and suffered even worse when the stock price was halved again.

... So you think Evolution is a myth... But seem to fully support or accept the fact of medicines developed using knowledge derived from evolutionary theory?
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0Megabyte
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Maybe this isn't the time or place for that, Blayne. Dog piling Ron even on unrelated subjects smacks me as just mean-spirited.

Besides, it distracts from the issue. And it's not a very convincing argument, to boot.

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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by 0Megabyte:
Maybe this isn't the time or place for that, Blayne. Dog piling Ron even on unrelated subjects smacks me as just mean-spirited.

Agreed. Let's try to stick to one argument at a time, shall we?
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Ron Lambert
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Ah, a hint of fairness! What a breath of fresh air! Thanks, OMegabyte and rivka. And a Happy New Year to you both. No visit from Santa's Dark Elf for you!
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rivka
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But no comment on the on-topic posts?
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Ron Lambert
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I've already commented at length, rivka, and I've already answered--directly or implicitly--all the criticisms. At this point I would merely be repeating myself to people who did not read closely or weigh properly what I said already.
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Orincoro
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Oh that's good. I like that. If you don't agree with me, it's because you didn't properly appreciate my point of view. And it's your fault.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
I've already commented at length, rivka, and I've already answered--directly or implicitly--all the criticisms. At this point I would merely be repeating myself to people who did not read closely or weigh properly what I said already.

Whenever a person reads your position closely and weighs it properly and then disagrees with you anyway, you default to insisting that it is a result of not reading closely or weighing properly.

It gets old.

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Ron Lambert
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Sam, it is clear that what is irreducible is disagreement of opinion. As far as I am concerned, you and Blayne and Orincoro and Rakeesh can take your ill-informed arrogance and proclaim yourselves masters of the apes. Who cares?
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TomDavidson
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What makes you suspect that they are ill-informed, Ron?
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Orincoro
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Sam, it is clear that what is irreducible is disagreement of opinion. As far as I am concerned, you and Blayne and Orincoro and Rakeesh can take your ill-informed arrogance and proclaim yourselves masters of the apes. Who cares?

I actually don't have an opinion on this particular point, I just object to your logic, which is flawed. I also don't like you.
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Samprimary
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To bring this back sorta to the issue of healthcare, this was a headliner on reddit:

quote:
Congratulations USA! You now have 50,000,000 citizens without health insurance! And 27% of the uninsured used all of their assets and savings to pay medical bills! 1/4 required medical care and didn't get it due to cost!
and it's just ...

sigh.

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Rakeesh
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quote:
Sam, it is clear that what is irreducible is disagreement of opinion. As far as I am concerned, you and Blayne and Orincoro and Rakeesh can take your ill-informed arrogance and proclaim yourselves masters of the apes. Who cares?
Well, clearly you do, Ron. Anyway, you're either self-aware to acknowledge that you might have some bias in a case where you lost some money or not.

Really, most folks expecting to be taken seriously would've simply acknowledged the point and taken pains to explain, "No, I thought of this, took it into account, here's why," as one should when there's a glaring reason the listener perhaps ought to disregard their statements. And in your case we had >two, the other being 'truly was a cure for the common cold'.

I don't claim to be well-informed at all about this particular subject, but I'm sufficiently well-informed about people in general to know that when an individual has gotten burned on an investment, it is prudent to take their statements on that investment with a grain of salt-particularly when their politics start getting involved. Especially when they start making grandiose unlikely statements about common colds.

Now, where's some monkeys for me to be master of?

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BlackBlade
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quote:
Now, where's some monkeys for me to be master of?
Apes Rakeesh, apes.
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Rakeesh
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Well, yes, but that ruins the alliterative affect I was going for.
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Samprimary
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you could be an authoritarian ape autocrat, ably aggrandizing absolute authority; an able arch-administrator amongst anthropocene ancestors.
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Orincoro
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Ass.
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The Rabbit
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quote:
I can point to tens of millions (at least) of lives saved, and hundreds of millions of lives greatly improved by the elimination of the FDA at some point in the past, no problem; it doesn't take many wonder drugs to do that.
Fugu, I keep hearing these kinds of numbers being thrown around but I can't find a credible source for them. Do you have one?

Frankly, tens of millions of lives saved by eliminating the FDA seems highly improbable. At its worst, average time for drug approval by the FDA was around 3 years. Between 1980 and 1999, the average was 2 years.

The major killers in the US over the past 50 years have been cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. Roughly 500,000 Americans die each year from Cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that between 1990 and 2005, ~ 750,000 cancer deaths were prevented by medical advances (including early diagnosis, drugs, surgery, radiation, etc). I'll be generous and assume that 50% more could have been saved with out the 2 year FDA delay, and extrapolate that backwards for 50 years and we get 1.25 million lives that could have been saved. Which is a lot, but no where near tens of millions and that's using an extremely generous assumption

Around 800,000 people in the US die annually from cardiovascular disease. Between 1990 and 2000, the death rate from Cardiovascular disease declined ~2% per year. If you could push that curve back 2 years by eliminating the FDA, and extrapolate of the last 50 years, you get around 1.5 million deaths prevented. Large, but no where close to the numbers you are claiming.

2.4 million people die annually in the US. Over a 50 year period, that's roughly 120 million deaths. (Death rates have declined substantially but the population has grown so that's probably a fair estimate). For your statistic to be valid, at least 10% of all the deaths in the US in the past half century could have been prevented by a drug that was under review by the FDA. I just don't think that's remotely reasonable.

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scholarette
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I have trouble believing the FDA would not approve a drug because it decreases the efficiency of birth control. As someone on birth control, I have in the past been informed, use backup method while taking this drug. I have a friend who was young and stupid and when the dr said make sure to use protection while on this pill thought that meant to just not forget her pills and 9 months later had a beautiful baby boy. So, if this drug was so great, why would it be refused when lots of other drugs have the same failing and aren't refused?

I actually would like to see three classifications of drugs-safe, effective and safe and effective. I know a doctor who uses herbal methods. Generally by the time people make it to him, they are going to die (severe burn and infections). He says many methods he believes are not very effective, but for that one person who it works for, it is the difference between life and death. I am aware of, but confidential, some other research where there wan great effects for some people that were pretty clearly an effect of treatment but others had no effect at all. To make it worse, the mechanism was uncertain. So, it was absolutely safe, but the efficacy was overall low. For some patients though, it was a lifesaver. For drugs like that, perhaps labeling them as safe, but not proven effective would be of use.

I also am aware of some treatments that may lead to ten years of improved life, but life threatening side effects. I think a patient with debilitating disease should be able to choose if they want a shortened life for a few years of pain free living. So, effective but not safe. Clearly label, require clear consent but let the patient decide.

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Xavier
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Without the FDA, I'm not sure those "miracle drugs" would ever have existed in the first place, much less make it to the market sooner.

Why spend billions on devising a new drug when you can just spend millions to advertise your snake oil instead?

If you do invent a miracle drug, why should a doctor prescribe yours over the other dozens of drugs that claim to cure the same illness?

I'm just not buying that line of thought.

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The Rabbit
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I would really like to see the source for the "tens of millions of lives saved". I want to see what methods they used and what assumptions they made. On the face of it, the number is simply ridiculously high.
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Ron Lambert
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My positiion simply stated is that the FDA is worthwhile, and performs a needed service, but sometimes it can err seriously because of the fallible judgment of humans and their pet biases.

I have also heard it said that under modern guidelines, asprin would never receive FDA approval (it is prone to produce or aggravate bleeding ulcers), so it is a good thing it has been "grandfathered in" as a derrivative of the herbal remedy, willow leaves. Maybe we would still be better off using willow leaves. But the 81-grain asprin dosage has been shown to reduce the likelihood of heart attacks or strokes, while not being likely to aggravate anyone's ulcer. Then again, vitamin E and folic acid probably are just as efficacious for those things.

Rabbit, I would remind you again of Thalidomide, which could have produced a large crop of deformed and even stillborn babies, had it been approved in this country like it was in Europe.

Go back over a hundred years or so, and you will find a medical science that routinely prescribed mercury chloride (calumel) for treatment of many illnesses, and that even taught it was a valid principle to use small amounts of known poisons to combat disease. Even after many medical professionals had finally learned better, it took an agency like the FDA to put a stop to the systematic poisoning of patients.

quote:
"Mercury became a popular remedy for a variety of physical and mental ailments during the age of 'heroic medicine.' It was used by doctors in America throughout the 18th century, and during the revolution, to make patients regurgitate and release their body from 'impurities'. Benjamin Rush, a famed physician in colonial Philadelphia and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, was one particular well-known advocate of mercury in medicine and famously used calomel to treat sufferers of yellow fever during its outbreak in the city in 1793. Calomel was given to patients as a purgative until they began to salivate. However, it was often administered to patients in such great quantities that their hair and teeth fell out. Shortly after yellow fever struck Philadelphia, the disease broke out in Jamaica. A war of words broke out in the newspapers concerning the best treatment for yellow fever; bleeding or calomel. Anecdotal evidence indicates calomel was more effective than bleeding."
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calomel

It is also worth noting that medical historians believe that Sir Isaac Newton's five-year-long period of insanity was caused by his imbibing mercury--his lab notes described the taste of mercury in various experiments. The expression "mad as a hatter" came from the fact that hat makers routinely used mercury in the manufacture of felt, and in the persuit of their craft, often inhaled mercury fumes. Many of them went insane, at least for a time.

[ January 01, 2011, 05:07 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]

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Samprimary
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quote:
I have also heard it said that under modern guidelines, asprin would never receive FDA approval (it is prone to produce or aggravate bleeding ulcers), so it is a good thing it has been "grandfathered in" as a derrivative of the herbal remedy, willow leaves.
I have heard many things said. I have heard it said that the world is flat and we didn't land on the moon. Where's this inescapable procedure of FDA approval that would invariably prevent approval of aspirin? I don't think it exists.
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Ron Lambert
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Prove it doesn't exist. [Smile]
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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Prove it doesn't exist. [Smile]

The FDA approved aspirin for stroke prevention in 2007. So yes the idea the aspirin could not be approved under modern FDA guidelines is a complete myth.

The FDA has approved naproxin and ibuprofen for over the counter use. Both of these medications have similar adverse side effects to aspirin.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Prove it doesn't exist. [Smile]

Ok here.

quote:

Contained within that quote is all the relevant regulatory guidelines of the FDA which would have part-and parcel disallowed the approval of aspirin without grandfathering.

Notice how the quote is empty.

Ok, that was pretty easy! Let me know if you find anything which can be put into that quote.

[ January 02, 2011, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Rabbit, I would remind you again of Thalidomide, which could have produced a large crop of deformed and even stillborn babies, had it been approved in this country like it was in Europe.
Why are you reminding me of this, I have never disputed it. I have been asking specifically about Fugu13's claim that tens of millions lives could have been saved by eliminating the FDA. I would still like to see some sources for this number because it seems outrageously high.

[ January 03, 2011, 08:40 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]

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Ron Lambert
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And I have been contending for largely the same thing, Rabbit, that the FDA has done far more good than harm. I would say that tens of millions of lives have been saved that would have been lost without the FDA. I only stipulate that sometimes the FDA can and has made mistakes, because they are all human.

I talked to a person one time who was lamenting about the terrible experience she had on jury duty, even though the evidence (including multiple direct eye-witnesses) was conclusive that the accused followed someone into a fast-food drive-in, brandished a gun and yelled at the driver for some perceived provocation on the road (a road-rage case). One jurer held on for days because the defendent was a medical doctor, and she said she just couldn't believe a doctor would behave that way.

Doctors can behave wrongly, because they are no less human than anyone else. Likewise scientists can behave wrongly. Likewise government officials can behave wrongly.

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