Does Ron Paul think we should eliminate the FDA?

[TimB]

I'm sympathetic toward Ron Paul, but his stance on the FDA really worries me. It sounds like he wants to eliminate or at least vastly weaken drug testing. While he doesn't come right out and say that (that I can find), he does make a lot of anti-FDA statements that worry me.

I think people don't know exactly why the power of the FDA was expanded in 1961. A drug called Thalidomide was released in Europe for morning sickness, and the company that manufactured it wanted to bring it to the US. A lone FDA worker by the name of Frances Kelsey insisted on more testing ("more burdensome testing" many modern politicians would call it) before it could be released because she had concerns about the drug. The company put a lot of pressure on her to approved it, saying it had already been released in Europe, yadda, yadda.

Well, it turned out that the drug caused truly horrific birth defects (do a Google picture search for "thalidomide"). 10,000 kids in 46 countries were badly damaged (and innumerable more were just stillborn). The only thing that saved literally thousands of American children from this fate was Kelsey, who received the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. It was total luck that she had had a specific background in biochemistry and pregnancy to know to stop the drug.

Presumably, Ron Paul, being a doctor, knows the story of Thalidomide. We have had the world of a weak FDA. Companies can and will push drugs out if less testing is required.

If Ron Paul believes the FDA should be less corrupt, or should be less influenced by drug companies, or whatever, then I can get on board. But it sounds like he wants to gut the FDA in the name of "The Federal Government shouldn't be doing that," and that is just crazy, based on history.

Does anyone have any specifics about Ron Paul's beliefs on this? I like a lot of what he says, but some things I just can't embrace.

[dannno]

To understand the position of liberty as related to health you must ask yourself a few questions and get the old cob webbed way of thinking out of your system.

What makes you think that there would be less drug testing if the FDA were abolished? Who is stopping people from testing drugs in the free market?

Who is forcing you to take new drugs on the market that you do not believe have been thoroughly tested?

If you think there is a govt. agency testing drugs thoroughly, are you more likely to take new drugs on the market without educating yourself first? Is this not at least partly shirking your own responsibility in the matter? What if the govt. was paid off to approve a new drug that was dangerous? Do you really trust government to thoroughly test drugs? How many people have died from approved drugs? How many people have died who could have been saved by drugs which took too long to be approved or were never approved? You can't just put up one example of where people were hurt and assume that overall they have benefited society, you have nothing to compare it to.

How many good healthful substances have not been approved by the FDA due to lack of funding for testing? Do you know how many tens of millions of dollars it requires to get a drug through all of the FDA hurdles?

Are you aware that since it is not profitable to put a natural substance that cannot be patented through FDA testing that therefore natural substances CAN AND WILL NEVER be approved for use by the FDA? What if many of these substances are more safe and more effective at treating a variety of conditions and ailments? Isn't this a major flaw in the system?

Finally, the FDA is controlled by big pharma (the drug industry) as well as big ag (Monsanto, etc.). They create these hurdles so that they become the monopoly players in the industry and profit the most, removing smaller competitors and natural substances which cannot be patented from having any widespread use. It is a racket.

[heavenlyboy34]

The FDA has caused more deaths and sickness than it's ever prevented. It's also unconstitutional. RP plans to slash the FDA budget, but not eliminate it (unfortunately).
hxxp://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/ron-pauls-economic-plan-eliminates-department-of-education-and-5-others/

"Paul would slash funding for the remaining departments, including a 40 percent cut for the Food and Drug Administration and a 30 percent budget reduction for the EPA. The Department of Defense would see $832 billion disappear from its budget during Paul’s first term in office, most of which would stem from Paul’s plan to end all foreign wars and foreign aid."

[heavenlyboy34]

To understand the position of liberty as related to health you must ask yourself a few questions and get the old cob webbed way of thinking out of your system.

What makes you think that there would be less drug testing if the FDA were abolished? Who is stopping people from testing drugs in the free market?

Who is forcing you to take new drugs on the market that you do not believe have been thoroughly tested?

If you think there is a govt. agency testing drugs thoroughly, are you more likely to take new drugs on the market without educating yourself first? Is this not at least partly shirking your own responsibility in the matter? What if the govt. was paid off to approve a new drug that was dangerous? Do you really trust government to thoroughly test drugs? How many people have died from approved drugs? How many people have died who could have been saved by drugs which took too long to be approved or were never approved? You can't just put up one example of where people were hurt and assume that overall they have benefited society, you have nothing to compare it to.

How many good healthful substances have not been approved by the FDA due to lack of funding for testing? Do you know how many tens of millions of dollars it requires to get a drug through all of the FDA hurdles?

Are you aware that since it is not profitable to put a natural substance that cannot be patented through FDA testing that therefore natural substances CAN AND WILL NEVER be approved for use by the FDA? What if many of these substances are more safe and more effective at treating a variety of conditions and ailments? Isn't this a major flaw in the system?

Finally, the FDA is controlled by big pharma (the drug industry) as well as big ag (Monsanto, etc.). They create these hurdles so that they become the monopoly players in the industry and profit the most, removing smaller competitors and natural substances which cannot be patented from having any widespread use. It is a racket.

Yeah, this ^^ too. There are a ridiculous amount of unsafe drugs on the market and extremely safe and efficacious ones off the market because of the FDA.

[dannno]

A good stepping stone to get away from the real problems the FDA creates would be to take away their ability to enforce while retaining their ability to provide information. This allows those who believe in the FDA to use them as a guide or information source for their food or health treatments while allowing others to use other treatments, foods or sources of information if they wish.

[erowe1]

So if I want to take Thalidomide, it shouldn't be my own decision?

[xFiFtyOnE]

The prescription drugs the FDA passes are causing a nation wide epidemic of legal drug addicts. My mother is one. I would rather her be a pothead or an alcoholic to ease her pain any day over her slowly killing herself with a lethal cocktail of chemicals the FDA claims are safe. And it looks like the problem is growing. I would be willing to bet everyone who reads this knows of atleast one person who is addicted to prescription drugs (whether prescribed to them or someone else...). At the very least I feel the FDA is ineffective. At most I feel it could be making the problem worse. What is the FDA's job? To make food and drugs safer. They are surely failing on the safe drugs end. Only two solutions to better our situation: MAJOR reform of FDA or End the FDA. A Paul adminstration would surely address this problem in a proper way, whatever he decides.

[gerryb]

Why is the FDA initiating SWAT team raids of small family owned farms and food businesses, such as walnut, almond, pomegranate, raw milk, artisan cheese, among a litany of hundreds of others?

If this movie has a showing in your area, check it out;
http://farmageddonmovie.com/

[erowe1]

The Independent Institute has put out some great stuff on the FDA. Here's a website they have on it:
http://www.fdareview.org/

[Tod]

A while back I heard some folks talking about how the FDA tests: they don't. They have the foxes do the testing and submit results. The proposal was that things to be tested should be submitted blindly to a university who would then have no stake in the results. Merk would pay into a general fund and and the disbursements from the fund would go to the university to cover cost of testing.

That was someone's theory about improving it; not a libertarian solution, though.

[gerryb]

A while back I heard some folks talking about how the FDA tests: they don't. They have the foxes do the testing and submit results.

#Winner

[low preference guy]

Don't you think that having competition in the certification of the quality of foods and drugs will be better than having a monopoly of a giant government bureaucracy?

[LibertyEagle]

I'm sympathetic toward Ron Paul, but his stance on the FDA really worries me. It sounds like he wants to eliminate or at least vastly weaken drug testing. While he doesn't come right out and say that (that I can find), he does make a lot of anti-FDA statements that worry me.

I think people don't know exactly why the power of the FDA was expanded in 1961. A drug called Thalidomide was released in Europe for morning sickness, and the company that manufactured it wanted to bring it to the US. A lone FDA worker by the name of Frances Kelsey insisted on more testing ("more burdensome testing" many modern politicians would call it) before it could be released because she had concerns about the drug. The company put a lot of pressure on her to approved it, saying it had already been released in Europe, yadda, yadda.

Well, it turned out that the drug caused truly horrific birth defects (do a Google picture search for "thalidomide"). 10,000 kids in 46 countries were badly damaged (and innumerable more were just stillborn). The only thing that saved literally thousands of American children from this fate was Kelsey, who received the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. It was total luck that she had had a specific background in biochemistry and pregnancy to know to stop the drug.

Presumably, Ron Paul, being a doctor, knows the story of Thalidomide. We have had the world of a weak FDA. Companies can and will push drugs out if less testing is required.

If Ron Paul believes the FDA should be less corrupt, or should be less influenced by drug companies, or whatever, then I can get on board. But it sounds like he wants to gut the FDA in the name of "The Federal Government shouldn't be doing that," and that is just crazy, based on history.

Does anyone have any specifics about Ron Paul's beliefs on this? I like a lot of what he says, but some things I just can't embrace.

The answer to your question is that NO, President Paul would not end the FDA.

[erowe1]

The answer to your question is that NO, President Paul would not end the FDA.

Really? Are you sure about that?

[low preference guy]

The answer to your question is that NO, President Paul would not end the FDA.

That's not the question. The question is whether Ron Paul thinks we should eliminate the FDA. He most definitely thinks that we should.

[icon124]

We should be he can't that fast. Maybe if he had a few years to show alternatives first, but he cannot just come in and completely do away with it without any type of transition.

I like what someone else mentioned...if you feel that you will never do anything without approval of the FDA first...how about just drop them down to an information hub status. Where they could not force you to take or not take something, but they could provide information on what they think about it.

That would be a good solution to the FDA until we could transition it completely to the free market...where there would be competition to bring the best drug to the table.

[freshjiva]

I invite you to check out PhRMA:

http://www.phrma.org/

This is a free association of doctors, scientists, pharmacists, and patients, dedicated to providing quality research on the most pressing health concerns of our time. They provide detailed reviews of prescription drugs as well.

This is an example of how the free market can provide critical reviews of drugs and their safety/efficacy profile. In the absence of the FDA, maybe organizations like PhRMA would provide a "stamp of approval" or maybe a tiered system for ranking each and every drug. Your family physician, or hospital ER doctors, can then build on their research and make the decision whether or not to prescribe the drug to their patients.

The scientific community is always evolving. There is no one way to do anything. I think we can all agree to that. But the FDA has a long history of making unilateral decisions, even when there are scientists unaffiliated with the drugmaker who have found SOME benefit to drugs.

The most common thought process people have is that they assume that in the absence of government, disasters like the Thalidomide example you provided would be rampant. The reality is that there will always be bad drugs that get out on the market, even with the FDA. The greater question to ask is this: are a small panel of individuals at the FDA smarter than the scientific community at large? Why should their opinions matter more than other doctors?

That is what the FDA does. They unilaterally reject (or accept) drugs and their decisions are often arbitrary in nature. There are several dozen cases over the past 10 years in which the FDA has punished small pharmaceutical companies, who develop niche therapies, by rejecting their drug candidates based on arbitrary disagreements on the interpretation of the very same data.

[dannno]

I like what someone else mentioned...if you feel that you will never do anything without approval of the FDA first...how about just drop them down to an information hub status. Where they could not force you to take or not take something, but they could provide information on what they think about it.

That would be a good solution to the FDA until we could transition it completely to the free market...where there would be competition to bring the best drug to the table.

I should admit that this idea is borrowed from Milton Friedman, from long, long ago.

[specsaregood]

That's not the question. The question is whether Ron Paul thinks we should eliminate the FDA. He most definitely thinks that we should.

But it isn't a priority. I think he would agree that reducing the FDA's role from proving effectiveness to just ensuring safety would be a good first step and require less of a budget.

[anaconda]

I believe that his position is that the FDA is corrupt. They are bribed by big pharma and will approve lethal drugs and repress useful ones, especially those that are not politically connected through cronyism. They will sabotage small organic farmers against the elite of the likes of Monsanto, and arrest people for trying to produce healthy raw milk. I heard a dude from the Ayn Rand Institute absolutely CRUSH Thom Hartmann a couple of years ago with an explanation of how food and drug approval could be monumentally improved if it was privatized. I think this was it...it's only about 8 minutes I think. worth a listen...

Scroll down to "Food Safety & Regulation April 8th 2009":

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServ...views_hartmann

[areamike]

That's not the question. The question is whether Ron Paul thinks we should eliminate the FDA. He most definitely thinks that we should.

That is completely false. Ron Paul would NOT eliminate the FDA or the EPA. He would slash their funding to help curb the level of corruption in those agencies. You bet your butt on that, but he would not eliminate them. That is NOT his plan

Not to mention, the only agencies Paul's plan mentions of eliminating are the departments of Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Interior.

It amazes me how many lies many people believe from the mass media and other politicians.

[Brett85]

The FDA has caused more deaths and sickness than it's ever prevented. It's also unconstitutional. RP plans to slash the FDA budget, but not eliminate it (unfortunately).

He wants to eliminate it eventually, but just not over night. As others have said, it's an agency that's unconstitutional and has done more harm than good.

[Brett85]

Not to mention, the only agencies Paul's plan mentions of eliminating are the departments of Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Interior.

Yes, those are the only agencies he eliminates in his plan. But ultimately, he's said that if we had a Constitutional government we would abolish about 80% of what the federal government does, and the only things the federal government would do are things like national defense, a judicial system, enforcing contracts, giving us a sound currency, etc.

[tangent4ronpaul]

PhRMA is not your friend. They are the lobbying arm of Big Pharma.

Look up the term "evergreening drugs" sometimes. This is a practice of coming up with a similar designer drug to replace one who's patent has expired. Nexium is a familiar example. The drug company buried 5 studies that said it wasn't as good as prilosec.

there was also a professor doing drug studies/testing that was finally busted. He was just writing bogus reports and something like 32 drugs were approved by the FDA on the basis of these reports. He did NO TESTING!

-t

[Esoteric]

PhRMA is not your friend. They are the lobbying arm of Big Pharma.

Look up the term "evergreening drugs" sometimes. This is a practice of coming up with a similar designer drug to replace one who's patent has expired. Nexium is a familiar example. The drug company buried 5 studies that said it wasn't as good as prilosec.

there was also a professor doing drug studies/testing that was finally busted. He was just writing bogus reports and something like 32 drugs were approved by the FDA on the basis of these reports. He did NO TESTING!

-t

damn, i thought you were banned for good.

[Billy_McBong]

The FDA approves countless dangerous pharmaceutical meds but still rejects marijuana. When something being FDA approved isn't a very good guarantee of safety I fail to see the beneficial purpose the FDA has for Americans.