| I've never heard of the FDA funding a drug study, that is more a NIH thing. If the FDA were sending out requests for proposals I would expect them to be about: - testing food for contamination - inspecting food facilities and farms for safety - ensuring drugs are not contaminated and that safety reports are coordinated The NIH is the one that provides funding for health studies... please understand that I'm not saying it's good or correct that studies of supplements aren't getting funding, I'm saying that the FDA is not involved. Direct frustration at the right target, pharmaceutical companies (i.e. capitalism) having no interest in unpatentable low cost treatments and NIH/government not funding such studies when they should. I agree, the NIH should study all these things -- and does if you look at their budget, via tens of thousands of individual academic research groups with less incentive to not study supplements. Capitalism is still there, but if anywhere can study it without worrying as much about profit motive it'd be academia or a national lab. I also agree that NIH should have more money targeted at low-profit drug studies. That's unfortunately the kind of thing that gets determined by congress unless they decide to do it on their own. The best situation is one where the legislature requires a minimum amount be spent by an agency to support certain kinds of research (for instance, they do this across the federal government through the SBIR program for small businesses). https://www.nih.gov/ABOUT-NIH/WHAT-WE-DO/BUDGET > The NIH invests most of its $45 billion budget in medical research for the American people. > Over 84 percent of NIH’s funding is awarded for extramural research, largely through almost 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every state. > In addition, over 10 percent of the NIH's budget supports projects conducted by nearly 6,000 scientists in its own laboratories, most of which are on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The remaining 6 percent covers research support, administrative, and facility construction, maintenance, or operational costs. |