I imagine that Thalidomide had
no effect on
pregnant rats and their offspring. So, we had no way of knowing what would happen in
humans. Turns out it's bad fetuses. No one intended the pregnant mothers in the case of thalidomide to be
guinea pigs; no one knew the deformaties would happen. How could anyone have known? You wouldn't believe how hard it is to talk pregnant women into
new drug testing. This, and other cases, has caused the FDA to swing to the side of
extreme caution.
This caution results in the
delay or
denial of useful drugs to the US population. We have swung so far in the direction of
protecting corporations and the
FDA that we now have less effective drugs than most other countrires.
Case in point: There is a new treatment available in
Canada which is much more effective than what we have here in the US in holding
HIV and
Hepatitus C at bay. It will likely be
years before US Citizens have access to these medications.
I realize some of you will be saying "What does she mean - "protecting corporations and the FDA"? Well, while it seems that new drug approval is
delayed here in order to protect
consumers (and, indeed, this is probably 50% true), the other side of the story is that the FDA and the
pharmaceutical companies do not want to be
sued by the .004% of the population that might have a negative reaction to a drug that could save that other 99.996% of the population. The
sad part is that the one person who sues can cause a medicine to be
removed permanently from the market. Our
litigative nature is harming us!
There must be a
balance between
protection and
progress. I
hope we find it some day.