Abolish the FDA

Allegations are swirling that the FDA is doing a poor job protecting Americans from unsafe drugs. Where to begin? First and most obviously: why would anyone seriously expect taxpayer-funded bureaucrats to promote the well-being of consumers? These bureaucrats have no motive of personal gain (profit) or loss to inspire them to be diligent and creative in anticipating and serving the desires of millions of strangers. Furthermore, the FDA faces no real competition. Combine these facts with the additional reality that the regulated too often enjoy undue, if sub rosa, influence with the regulators -- thus "capturing" the regulatory process -- and you have a stew that is a hearty meal for bureaucrats, politicians, and regulated firms but that is poisonous to consumers. Second and, in my opinion, even more importantly: the entire notion of "safe" and "unsafe" drugs is wrong. Popular discussion of the FDA's role proceeds as if there is an objective level of safety for drugs. Each drug either reaches this level or it doesn't. If it does, it is "safe"; if it doesn't reach this level, it is "unsafe." This notion is preposterous. The safety of each and every drug is in a range. Drug A can be more safe or less safe than can drug B. Modifications can make drug A more safe today than it was yesterday. Also, because different people often react differently to any drug, the safety of drug A to Ms. Jones might differ from the safety of the very same drug to Mr. Smith. Apart from the benchmark of absolute, 100% safety for every potential user of any drug -- a benchmark impossible to attain -- there is no obvious benchmark (short of 100% safety for everyone) that distinguishes a "safe" drug from an "unsafe" drug. The FDA and pundits do the public no favors by prattling on as if it were otherwise. Once we understand that absolute safety is impossible, we're closer to understanding that the FDA's ostensible goal of ensuring "safe" drugs is indefinable. Is it startling that a taxpayer-funded, centralized, monopoly bureaucracy -- charged with protecting 300 million people from "unsafe" drugs -- and overseen by politicians whose comparative advantage is in posing pretty for cameras and belting out platitudinous sound-bites, will screw-up given that the benchmark to which its performance is judged in fact is fundamentally indefinable? Not only does the FDA not serve a valid public service; it cannot possibly serve a valid public service. It should be abolished immediately.