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Dr. Frances Kelsey, Who Saved American Babies From Thalidomide, Dies At 101
circletimessquare writes: Plenty of regulations are bad (some because big business corrupts them) but the simple truth is modern society cannot function without effective government regulation. It keeps are food safe, our rivers clean, and our economy healthy. Passing away at age 101 Friday was a woman who personified this lesson. In 1960 the F.D.A. tasked Dr. Frances Kelsey with evaluating a drug used in Europe for treating morning sickness. She noticed something troubling, and asked the manufacturer William S. Merrell Co. for more data. "Thus began a fateful test of wills. Merrell responded. Dr. Kelsey wanted more. Merrell complained to Dr. Kelsey's bosses, calling her a petty bureaucrat. She persisted. On it went. But by late 1961, the terrible evidence was pouring in. The drug — better known by its generic name, thalidomide — was causing thousands of babies in Europe, Britain, Canada and the Middle East to be born with flipperlike arms and legs and other defects." Without Dr. Kelsey's scientific and regulatory persistence in the face of mindless greed, thousands of Americans would have suffered a horrible fate.
This is why bureaucracy is so dangerous. You are declared a hero if you stop something bad and are declared a failure if you let something bad happen. But if something is beneficial it doesn't matter if you let it go to market or not. The millions that suffer and die because of delays to get products to market are invisible. No stories are written about them and you are never blamed.
With those incentives it's easy to see why the bureaucrat must delay things as long as possible.
Take the OP quote of how the government ensures a healthy economy. We all know that's a complete joke. After 2008 what was needed was for the poorly run companies to go bankrupt and be bought by the well run companies. But that is risky from a bureaucratuv position. The status quo is preferable. So instead you take money from the well run companies and you give it to the poorly run ones as a bailout and everything is fixed right? Well right up until the house of cards falls again.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Yet you know with certainty that the doctors prescribed a real medication with actual effects and not just colored water that the doctor makes in the back of his office. You know, with certainty that the bottle Wal-Mart sells you (and really, if you have money wtf are you shopping at Wal-Mart?) will be the actual medicine and that they haven't been mixing water in to increase their profits, or buying counterfeit drugs to again increase their profits.
The reason you know these things is because the government enforces regulations protecting you from such dishonest practices. The government enforces regulations that save your life and your children's lives from corporate greed every day, and because you don't see that you get to pretend like they aren't necessary, but you are simply deluded.
Also, you may have money but you certainly aren't very bright if you think googling WebMD is a valid replacement for a medical degree.
From what I've read, I don't think the "non-addictive" nature of heroin was really a Bayer greed conspiracy as much as a byproduct of poorly understood nature of opiate dependence.
Ironically, opiates saved countless lives from people suffering from intestinal illness where diarrhea would have killed them from dehydration. Considering the state of medical science at the turn of the century and the lack of alternative medications available, the opiates were miracle drugs. You have to wonder how many potentially life saving surgeries (like amputations or excisions of infection) wouldn't have happened without opiate pain relief or how many recoveries wouldn't have happened without opiate pain relief.
A lot of mass opiate addiction (to the extent that it existed at all) wasn't injected morphine, but smoking opium. For those with an opium habit, a small maintenance dose of a stronger opiate like heroin that allowed them to not spend hours in an opium den may have actually seemed like a cure to them, much as contemporary medicine might consider opiate maintenance with methadone or buprenorphine a therapy for heroin addiction.
You also have to wonder for some of the old use cases where it seems totally wrong now (like providing it to teething children) if perhaps the nature of its use didn't actually result in, say, toddlers getting addicted. Opiate tinctures were still manufactured medicines that cost money in an era where disposable income was small and geographic access to doctors or pharmacies to obtain it was limited. It's not hard to imagine that it may have been used sparingly due to cost, supply limitations or even medical advice from doctors who were aware of its habit forming potential, resulting in actual use not that different than a bottle of 20 vicodin provided after a wisdom tooth extraction today.
I had terrible ear infection problems as a child in the early1970s, getting drainage tubes in my ears more than once (which was a real hospital stay back then) and our pediatrician gave us a bottle of demerol to treat the pain from the ear infection something I doubt would even be considered today.
And how would these parents have proven that the drug was to blame? Who would've forced the company to provide samples or hand over data? Would a coalition of parents have pooled their money to employ scientists and rent lab time for the task? I wouldn't care to guess how many millions more would have to suffer deformity to inspire that kind of collective action, but the scenario doesn't exactly make for a free market paradise.
The courts. It's called "Discovery." Requests for Production generally have to be complied with.
Oh, the "requests" which "have to be complied with" or they will be backed up with VIOLENCE. STATIST!!! Seriously, everything about libertarians and similar is hilarious. I would be soooo embarrassed to admit I ever considered myself to be one if I didn't know that wisdom comes with age, if at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"