Showing posts with label FDA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FDA. Show all posts

Walter E Williams: Officially Killing Americans

Incentives of the drug bureaucrats.         The Food and Drug Administration can make two types of errors. It can approve a drug that has dangerous unanticipated side effects, or it can reject or delay approval of a drug that is safe and effective. Let's look at these errors, because to err on the side of under- or over-caution is costly.   ... MORE

Henry I. Miller: Life-Saving Drugs And Deadly Delays

Curious incentives on display.    The Food and Drug Administration just granted permission for “expanded access” to an experimental medicine for Ebola. It’s OK as far as it goes, but it’s an exception to the FDA’s reluctance to approve the use of life-saving products. Safety and efficacy testing of the drug, designated TKM-Ebola, has barely     ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Who Owns You?

Who should decide your fate?        Darcy Olsen, president of the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, and Richard Garr, president of Neuralstem, a biotech company, wrote "Right to Try experimental drugs" in USA Today (5/28/2014). They pointed out that   ... MORE

FDA And Big Tobacco Join Forces To Choke Out E-Cigs

Anti-smoking device in the crosshairs.      Depending on what happens next, the electronic tobaccoless smokes will either rot in the land of once-hyped forgotten gadgets, or would-be smokers will instead spend late nights puffing away in a hip sweet-smelling vape lounge with a beer in one hand and a pimped-out mod in the other.        ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: The 'Tobacco Products' That Aren't

FDA's slow-motion ban of e-cigs.      The option-reducers never rest. The first time the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) moved to regulate electronic cigarettes, it tried to ban them. Last month it took a different approach that may ultimately have a similar effect. Much will depend on whether the FDA irrationally decides to treat e-cigs    ... MORE

John Stossel: Bullies Rule

We're told government protects us,       but protectors quickly become bullies. Take the Food and Drug Administration. It seems like the most helpful part of government: It supervises testing to make sure greedy drug companies don't sell us dangerous stuff. The FDA's first big success was stopping thalidomide, a drug that prevented the    ... MORE

Nick Gillespie: Kill The FDA (Before It Kills Again!)

Death by government.     If you haven't seen The Dallas Buyers Club, which took home three Oscars last Sunday, you should. It's the most flat-out libertarian movie since Ghostbusters and one of the best message movies I can think of (of course, like all quality message movies, it's first and foremost a powerful piece of art). Specifically, it shines a  ... MORE

6 Shocking Studies That Prove Science Is Totally Broken

by Andrew Marinus, Alan Boyle and Jon Pearl.     Even if you're not all that into science, it's still a big part of the news that reaches you on a day-to-day basis -- you'll see interesting headlines about how studies show marijuana cures loneliness or how other studies say pot ruins your memory, and you kind of just assume they're true. If scientists   ... MORE

The FDA's Ill-Conceived Proposal To Ban Trans Fats

by Baylen Linnekin.         On Thursday the FDA made the surprise announcement that it would move to ban artificial trans fats, which are found in foods containing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. The ban would not apply to naturally occurring trans fats, such as those found in meat and dairy products. Adoption of the proposal, which is     ... MORE

FDA Seeks To Make Prescription Painkillers Harder To Get

Government steps up war on drugs.       A big change to legal drug policy is in the works. After years of pressure from public-health and addiction advocates, as well as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration has recommended that access to drugs containing the highly-addictive opiod narcotic hydrocodone       ... MORE

Who Should Make Medical Choices For You?

by Lawrence W. Reed.       Almost a decade ago, I went to Canada to obtain a customized medical procedure on both of my eyes—a procedure not yet approved by federal authorities in the United States. It involved a new “wavefront” LASIK technology designed for patients with a combination of astigmatism and very thin corneas. For more     ... MORE

Daren Bakst: Government Control Of Your Diet

Threats to the "freedom to eat."       Many politicians and self-appointed nutrition czars see Americans as incapable of making decisions about a basic necessity of life: eating. Therefore, they feel that government at all levels must try to control their diets. This control means trying to direct people to eat a certain way or expressly  ... MORE

The Problem With Federal Food-Labeling Laws

by Baylen Linnekin.       Since I wrote a column focusing on the increasing ubiquity and success of private food labeling in June, a series of important federal food labeling issues have made headlines. Not surprisingly, the government’s actions are mostly rife with drawbacks. Just this month, the FDA published a final rule on gluten-free   ... MORE

Government Nannies And The New Caffeine Crackdown

by Baylen Linnekin.    The FDA announced earlier this week that the agency will investigate “any and all products with added caffeine.” FDA officials claim they were spurred to take action after the recent introduction of one product, Alert Energy Gum, a new caffeinated gum made by Wrigley. The agency argues that such a novel product   ... MORE

Robert Higgs: ABC's For Today's Public School Students

A is for Alzheimer’s Disease.    If you eat lots of vegetables and floss your teeth, you will live a long time and get this condition as your reward. B is for Baconator. If thou shouldst ever eat one, thou shalt surely die. C is for Crumbling Infrastructure, an incantation government officials mutter when they want to spend more of the public’s money   ... MORE