If anyone found this interesting, you should check out "In the Pipeline", a nice insider blog in the pharma industry: http://pipeline.corante.com/index.xml
As a free bonus, his "Things I won't work with" sub-series is a great humor read about dangerous chemicals.
It's likely that the FDA has actually caused more deaths than they have prevented, by delaying and increasing the costs of bringing new drugs to market.
Its also that a lot of things that have been discovered have fallen out of use because they are no longer patentable and thus do not get any investment from drug companies.