A back pat for a function the market would have provided immediately. Drugs can definitely be poison. I'd much prefer safety analyses have a GitHub sha1 publicly accessible than secretively behind the FDA's closed doors.
> a function the market would have provided immediately.
This opinion would seem to be at odds with reality at large.
The reason the Food, Drug and Cosmetic act was passed in the first place is because of all the harm that the (then unregulated) pharmaceutical industry was doing. The market had centuries' worth of time to correct for people taking all sorts of drugs that actively kill people, and it didn't. It was only regulation that started to get the mess under control.
And it's the loopholes in regulation where things are worst. The supplement industry continues to do far more harm than good.
It's just possible that, despite the best efforts of some economists to argue that everyone is perfectly knowledgeable, rational, and emotionless in order to simplify their models, people continue to be merely human.
Even more than that, the FDA requires openness in a way that I'm not sure would be accomplishable without.
Publication bias is a real thing, and drug companies do know how to use it to their advantage. Take a look at what drug trial results looked like before and after the FDA started requiring pre-registration. The difference is, to put it mildly, staggering.
I'm pretty hard pressed to come up with a market equivalent to drug trial pre-registration. Given everything I've seen of Adam Smith's writings, I'm pretty sure that, were he alive today, he'd probably say something like, "Duh, of course. Do that. That is some excellent regulation, and obviously in the service of the public good."
Tangentially, I'm guessing that, if CBD had to go through pre-registered drug trials, it wouldn't be such a big deal. The funny thing about things that are widely believed to help with every last ailment is, they tend to all be about equally good at treating pretty much everything.
This opinion would seem to be at odds with reality at large.
The reason the Food, Drug and Cosmetic act was passed in the first place is because of all the harm that the (then unregulated) pharmaceutical industry was doing. The market had centuries' worth of time to correct for people taking all sorts of drugs that actively kill people, and it didn't. It was only regulation that started to get the mess under control.
And it's the loopholes in regulation where things are worst. The supplement industry continues to do far more harm than good.
It's just possible that, despite the best efforts of some economists to argue that everyone is perfectly knowledgeable, rational, and emotionless in order to simplify their models, people continue to be merely human.