[greenish_shore1]

That's why I said about them releasing science and evidence-based trusted information campaigns. Not about getting rid of the FDA entirely.

In the present information age, you don't need to give them such wide powers to avoid precisely what you're afraid about avoiding.

[lossolo]

That's a very naive view of the world. There are predators waiting for deregulation to flood the market with snake oil and profit from everyone. By the time the FDA can launch any campaign, people will already have been scammed or even killed. Moreover, the information age doesn't help or prevent these issues—just look at obesity rates, despite the wealth of information and science about junk food. What you're proposing might work for a small percentage of the most informed and intellectually capable individuals, but it creates risks for everyone else.

[greenish_shore1]

I don't agree and I think some of what you're pointing out is because we're still in a transitional period into a full information society (which we don't even fully know what it would be, even now, 30 years deep into that transitional period, but it's inevitable and I'm personally sure that it would be infinitely better that what we have now). I think of it as a duality, that usually, when we do something good, it usually creates some harm (for example, to a group we haven't even realized it existed!).

However, your point made me realize that, in fact, probably what you generally described as the most capable individuals, are probably even now mostly immune to the harm which FDA creates as "side effects" of what they consider good. So, if we assume that FDA's action don't "touch" them in most ways, should these most capable individuals be trying to reform it? But I don't think that the FDA's action don't affect the most capable individuals much. We're all one society and even if it doesn't influence them much directly, it still very much does so in more indirect ways.

Also think, why do you think that "predators" even exist? It could be either evil nature of the humankind itself, if we assume there is such, or something else creating a place for them. If it's the first one, we're fucked regardless. But maybe it's not?