The Politics of the F.D.A.

A fight over posting calorie counts for popcorn is just one example of the clash between the White House and the agency charged with protecting public health. Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, was forced to scrap plans to have calorie counts posted for foods served in movie theaters and on airplanes after a phone call from the White House deputy chief of staff in 2010. From the article: "White House officials describe their disagreements with the F.D.A. as part of the normal, constructive give-and-take over policy that has never undermined the agency’s mission. 'Under President Obama’s leadership, the Food and Drug Administration has new authority and resources to help stop kids from smoking, protect our food supply and approve more affordable prescription drugs,' said the White House press secretary, Jay Carney. The administration also views the agency’s hostility to its oversight as hopelessly naïve, given a 24-hour news cycle and a ferocious political environment that punishes any misstep. 'They want a world that doesn’t exist anymore,' an administration official said."

Comments

...and WTF is the tech angle here?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

...and WTF is the tech angle here?

It's all about an unimpinged right to choose

[Xaedalus]

It's the expansion of the "Nanny" state. Essentially, the government trying to intimidate or coerce people into making a healthy decision for their own good. Yes, posting the calorie count is an objective act. People are free to read the number and then decide for themselves. But it's the issue that the "Government" is forcing businesses to reveal calorie count in the name of trying to create a more healthy society, and thus subtly impinging on a person's ability to make a choice for good or ill.

Personally I view it as protecting the right to sin. We have to have free choice, which means we have to have the right to be able to freely choose what is wrong for both us and society. If we take away the right to choose what's wrong for us, then we begin to remove what makes us unique and individual. Doesn't mean we're immune to the consequences, but we must have the ability to choose. Like abortion: no matter how horrific the practice may be in its extremes, or how morally abhorrent the practice may be, we MUST allow women the right to choose. Otherwise we run the risk of creating a benevolent tyranny that seeks to protect us from ourselves--and a benevolent tyranny is still tyranny.