The FDA is a terrible organization

Y

Yauch

Active member
The FDA in america is a piss poor organization.

It is full of all of the dumbest scientists and researchers who settle for modest government wage because they weren't smart enough to make it in the real world.

For example.

Everybody has heard of Botox. In Europe for years now they have been using a similar thing called Reloxin. Of course Botox is the only one approved by the FDA in america because it is Better and Safer right?

Wrong!

Reloxin has been through hundreds of studies in Europe and it is just as safe as botox.

AND

It lasts twice as long as botox. Every study ever done has showed that Reloxin is a better product than botox in every way. But the company that makes botox pays the FDA to delay their approval of Reloxin in america so that it can make billions of dollars off of the MONOPOLY of botox. Botox is the only drug of its kind in america right now, and the company who makes it wants to keep it that way so they can charge people huge amounts, even though it is an inferior product.

And FDA is a crock of shit. This is just an example of their bullshit. One of the reasons america is the laughing stock of the rest of the world is because we americans think we have the most badass medical care in the world but in reality we are about 10 years behind the rest of Europe.

 
Wow, you really care. All your botox injections cutting into your ski budget or something?
 
yes, the truth is that marijauna kills more people every year than cancer does

this is why america spends more money every year busting potheads than it does on cancer research.
 
You always hear about drunk idiots getting into car accidents and killing 30 people and jumping off buildings, but toking is a lot worse because...

i have never been told.
 
Dude that means...

.05 x .05 x .05 x .05 x .05 ect....

Wow man I have a .000000000025% chance of being alive!

FUCK!
 
First off, it's not up to the FDA to legalize Marijuana, there are alot of other things that have to happen as well.

To the original poster, I'm guessing that the reason that Botox is the only one on the market is because they have the patent on that type of drug. Basically, a pharmaceutical gets 14 years (i believe, could be off by a year or two) after the propose this new drug. In those 14 years, they have to produce the drug, get approval of it in their own clinical studies, have it approved by the FDA, and then get it on the market. The average life of a drug on the market after that is about 4 years left on their patent. That means they get a monopoly for 4 years, before any knock off companies can produce. The only way that another company can have a similar drug produced is if it uses different means to achieve the same effect and then has it approved by the FDA.

I highly doubt the company that makes Botox is paying off the FDA, and for you to know about it, the general public would know about it, and then they would be fucked by the government. I'm willing to bet that Botox's patent hasn't run out yet, and when it does a bunch of knock off brands will spring up on the market.
 
theres alot of doctors in my family, so i know alot of things that aren't known to the gen public. And Reloxin (Dysport) is a different from botox and it was independently discovered. When i say similar I mean it has the same effects on muscle paralysis botox but its not a knock off.
 
Even if it isn't a generic knock off, then there is some other reason for them not putting it to market. It's either not doing well enough in clinical trials here in the States, or it's composition is too similar to that of Botox and it violates their patent. Either way, I'll ask my parents about it, they both work for Pfizer in R&D so maybe they'll have another explanation of why it isn't at market. I'm almost 99% positive that it isn't Botox paying off the FDA though, because that would be highly illegal and they would get fucked by the law.
 
Basically there were alot of doctors doing clinical trials with dysport (reloxin) and dissing on botox for funding bogus studies to support botox when they were finding that dysport was a much better drug. Allergen, the company who makes botox, tried to get the fda to crack down on doctors for researching the advantages of reloxin over botox. So now there are alot of doctors in america who despise allergen for trying to sick the fda on them. And theres no patent violation because otherwise they wouldnt have been able to sell reloxin in Europe for the last few years.
 
That makes more sense.

If you really want to get mad at the FDA though, look into all those supplements you guys take, energy, weight-lifting, protein, so on and so forth. They are not required to be approved by the FDA. They could be putting stuff on the market with cyanide in it for all you know, or have jizz in your energy drink instead of ginsing and guarana and taurine and shit. That's what scares me, you have no idea what's in those supplements or if they're safe. Only recently has the FDA realized that they need to do something about it but it's going to be a long long process.
 
One time I smoked pot, and all I did was sit around on the couch. I couldn't even move my body; it spontaneously became gelatineous and flaccid to the point of immobility. Then my dog gave me a bad look.

The moral: If you smoke pot, your dog will run away and live with aliens drawn illustrated with crayons weilding anti-pot flags.
 
"And FDA is a crock of shit. This is just an example of their bullshit. One of the reasons america is the laughing stock of the rest of the world is because we americans think we have the most badass medical care in the world but in reality we are about 10 years behind the rest of Europe."

Other than anti wrinkle injections, name one field that europe is ahead of the US in.
 
Environmentalism? Health Care? Drug laws? Foreign Policy? I think a better question would be name one thing the United States doesn't suck balls at.
 
Politicians don't run economies. Economies run themselves. All a government does is set the rules of the playing field.
 
And don't they set some bunk rules?

besides, America is the most wasteful and gluttonous country there is.

I dont know, I havent really thought about it too much. Politics confuse me.
 
Ummm... not for long man. The dollar is on the decline, inflation is on the rise--we're gonna get fucked pretty soon when our dependence on outsourcing to foreign countries comes back to bite us. China's economy is exploding while ours is relatively stagnant. Mark my words: it won't be long before we aren't the economic powerhouse we have been.
 
The FDA does its job, it regulates food and drug companies. Yes, it is a government organization, so yes, you will see it sanction substances that are a threat to the US economy. Dont blame the FDA if you dont like it - blame the drug companies that whine to the government, or blame the government for listening to them. The FDA does its fucking job, which is to keep shit off the market that could give you or your kids cancer. You are seriously mad at the wrong people.
 
China probably can't catch the US for another several hundred years. China has growth that is so much larger than everybody else, but they are still miles behind the bigger players in terms of actual development. That also comes with the assumption that the US economy will become stagnant or even shrink...both are unlikely. The US economy is still growing, despite any smaller issues.

The US is not without their problems, but you can say that for any nation on the planet. Though the reality of measuring economics by sovereign political boundaries is largely becoming a thing of the past. The global economy is blurring borders and culture.

So it seems to me that by the time anybody "catches" the US, they wont actually be catching anybody because the interdependency on global trade will have become so great that political boundaries will be practically meaningless in terms of economics.
 
Well, that isn't completely true. The FDA is actually rather messed up at the moment. Both of my parents work for Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical in the world, and I've worked there as an intern, so I get to hear all of the bitching.

Regardless, there are quite a few things the FDA doesn't regulate at all that could be potentially highly dangerous. Supplements, for example. Pretty much anything you buy at GNC for instance has never been through the FDA, at all. They could be putting anything in those bottles. There are a quite a few other things as well. The FDA really needs reform, there are alot of problems at the moment.
 
True enough. I don't think free healthcare to all is the right decision though, which alot of politicians and people seem to be advocating. I think that would create quite a few problems. We'll see what happens in the coming years.
 
no for real he's actually right. in my nutrition class we learned that vitamin supplementsarent even monitored by the food and drug administration because supplements arent viewed as drugs how ever at the doses their given which is like in some cases 8x the mega dose which is 10x your daily value or allowance. so really your getting 8,000% of your daily allowance in one pill. in these doses they become a drug. so the fda really should be monitoring them but theyre not. the fda takes forever to conduct any research and yes we are far behind europe and the rest of the world. its just that he stated it in a radical way. he kinda needs to chill out a bit. even tho he's right. and botox really wasnt the best example.
 
You have a lot of very good points, and I agree with some, but I still hold to what I was saying. I think that interdependency on global trade at the current point in time is drastically one-sided, if non-existent. Take China, for example once again. Though they depend on us in the sense that they need us in order to keep expanding through the manufacturing of goods, our dependence on China is to a much higher degree. In terms of economic stability, China has it while we don't, because they have a very internal-based economy while ours is external. Basically, as far as manufacturing the cheap items we all like to buy, China has us by the balls. If they were to stop making goods for us, we would be hard-pressed to control skyrocketing prices on everyday items, while they would lose a large source of revenue nationwide, they would be able to keep their economy, at least for consumers, relatively stable. Thats my take on it.
 
No economy is, or ever will be, completely self sustainable. China would not be able to survive if they pulled out of cheap manufacturing. First, because its impossible. Second, because you just unemployed the majority of a labor oriented workforce that lacks any specific skills or higher education. It would be catastrophic for the region. China has far to many impoverished people and not enough middle class to sustain a severe economic hit. It would be extremely painful and messy.

The US on there other hand, has and extremely strong middle class and a very diverse workforce. They also have an unemployment rate that is considered better than ideal by economist. The US also as an overwhelming monopoly on critical and creative expertise. Thats not to say that the US would not be hurt by some terrible event (see 9/11, an event that hurt the entire global economy), but the fact of the matter is that the US has far more resources at their disposal than China in terms of sustainability.
 
Something of note:

By the the term "middle class" I am not talking about to a person's income, but rather a state of mind. This state of mind entails a degree of security and comfort in daily society. It also entails the notion of vertical mobility; a system that enables and empowers the individual. The idea that you can move both up or down in the system.
 
Thalidomide. Read about it and then tell me the FDA takes too long to study drugs. I am happy we have the most rigorous and dynamic drug testing in the world. I don't want my wife to be ingesting shit that will make our baby deformed just because the drug was not studied enough.
 
I am not saying the FDA is without problems but ragging on the scientists that work there is low and unfounded. In fact they are some of the most well paid and respected scientists and researchers in the field.
 
thalidomide. way to bust out an example from 1957. Nothings different today?

The fda has absolute power. And they shouldn't. They can delay the approval of drugs as long as they want. If you think that the fda is not influenced at all by companies that will make or lose billions of dollars depending on their decisions, you underestimate how much dirty play there is in the pharmaceutical world.
 
You do realize that the US patent and trademark office is based around first to invent while the European Patent Office is first-to-file?  They could have filed Botox first with the EPO to get the patent in, since it is first-to-file.  Then filed it later in the US since it's first-to-invent, so it ran out in Europe early.  Or the US decided the products aren't differentiated enough to have two different patents and allow both on the market.  Or the Botox rival used a reach through licensing agreement to be able to use the technology in Europe, but not the US.  Or they have decided not to bring the drug to the US market.  But I am sure you know more than I do, since your parents are fucking doctors and have inside information.  Unless your parents are patent lawyers, or work for the USPTO, you don't know anything more than any other eductated person about the matter.  In summation, the FDA > You.
 
I completely agree with you that no economy can be self-sustainable. And maybe the example I used wasn't the best. I was trying to get across that we are not the only Country that China exports to (in fact, in 2004 we recieved only 8% of China's total exports, as compared to the 22% that went to Japan and 20% that went to Korea, which can be found on china's department of commerce site). However, as far as our imports, China is far and away the the leader of cheap goods. In that light, a breakdown in trade between the U.S. and China would be in the short term much more destructive to our economy. In the long term, however, you are correct, we would be able to produce goods here in the U.S. with our extensive resources. However, we would never be able to go to a retail store and pay the cheap prices we do right now. I want to note that this is a completely hypothetical situation that would never actually happen.

That being said, you win. You are obviously very learned in macroeconomics--far more than me. Thanks for the arguments though I like a good debate once in a while.
 
The goal of the FDA is not simply to keep you safe from bad food and drugs but also to keep american companies competitive. Sorry if you are anti economics or anything like that but yeah, keeping the U.S. food and drug companies is a big part of the purpose of the FDA.
 
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