Hacker News Reader

This conversation is confusing without the FDA isn’t everything allowed by default and you get far worse like the current supplement industry?

View on HN

Regulatory challenge is that the FDA have to combine 3 related but seperate concepts:

1. Manufacturing quality/ingredients accuracy (is the product what is says on the tin) 2. Safety 3. Efficacy

Medicines must pass all three, supplements don't have to meet any.

FDA and DEA should be concerned mainly with the contents matching the box, and not on medical claims of effectiveness.

In your opinion, should any government agency monitor truth of claims, or is this all outsourced to private things like consumer reports? Is it class action lawsuits?

And in the case of drug effectiveness, isn't this a very expensive endeavor, where the primary source of funding would be the companies themselves biasing results?

In this case we had companies happily selling us ineffective drugs, not because the FDA wanted it, but because they did not reject it. In a world without the FDA, what entity rejects?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com