[innguest]

Let's say it's John at the FDA coming up with this stuff. But John is really a victim of the system set up around him. He's following orders. He's just doing his job. He has already rationalized his guilt away from this deed.

Instead, how about we let the FDA continue with their silliness of approving or not approving drugs based on whatever criteria they want, while still allowing non-FDA approved drugs to be sold?

That way we can all decide, at point of sale, if we are going to trust FDA's opinion or not. They can put big warning labels if they want (the retailers, not the government).

The problem here is the FDA has a monopoly on deciding which drugs two people can exchange for money. They can keep judging drugs all they want, but their control of what hits the shelves is unconstitutional and immoral.

EDIT: to downvote this is to be against personal responsibility; the UK has a great nanny state you might want to partake in.

[anigbrowl]

John at the FDA could be the most rational drug policy wonk imaginable, but that's not going to help him during Congressional oversight hearings if lawmakers decide there is political capital to be made out of attacking him. For all its flaws, the FDA (like other agencies) has to follow rules of administrative process which are subject to challenge, and which aim to bring about iterative improvement. Legislative process is a lot more haphazard, and I'm not sure that the introduction of TV cameras has done anything to improve it.

[vertex-four]

> The UK has a great nanny state you might want to partake in.

The UK (well, England) is actually dismantling its "nanny state" extremely quickly, selling off public services to private corporations with the medium-term goal of removing all public funding for them, under a Conservative regime that shows no signs of stopping even when it makes absolutely no sense to privatise services. Pick on someone it makes more sense to.