During a meeting with leaders of the pharmaceutical industry on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he wanted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to speed drug approvals.
“We’re going to get the approval process much faster,” Trump said, adding that he has an unnamed “fantastic person” in mind to lead the agency.
Just how Trump will do that isn’t clear. But some of those with the president’s ear have embraced a radical free-market view. They want the marketplace, not the FDA, to determine how good drugs are.
For instance, one name floated in December as a potential FDA pick was that of Jim O’Neill, managing director of Peter Thiel’s investment firm Mithril Capital. O’Neill is a libertarian who has said he thinks drug makers shouldn’t have to prove their pills actually work at all, but only that they are safe. “Then let people start using them at their own risk,” he argued in a 2014 speech.
We’d literally have to pay the big pharma to be our own Guinea pigs.
What good is safe if it’s useless except to line the pockets of the trump dynasty family and friends?
How about if the prices are much lower to begin with?
It seems that they’d have to start off with low prices if all they can guarantee is that its “safe” (at least in a catastrophic sense - since there will always be side effects)- though there is always the issue of 1/1,000 safety issue that doesn’t get caught in smaller clinical trials focused on safety.
I guess they could speed it up from taking 15 years to about 12 or something. I don’t know if I would feel comfortable if it was less time than that though. They also need to do something about the cost of health care. It seems to be artificially high like college tuition.
I imagine part of the price of medication now is the cost that it takes to develop the drug. So those prices should go down. I wonder if it will be like buying over the counter medication like NSAIDs.
Actually thinking about it we could end up with less drugs not more. The reason is think of how many over the counter pain relievers that there are. Compare with the number of Anti-psychotics. Also will we need doctors to prescribe medication anymore or just get our own?
It will be a sad day for anyone seeking relief if we have to pick out the endless meds on the OTC isle.
Trial by error isn’t the way to shop for good meds.
Would they also end the ban on illegal drugs by reason of survival of the fittest?
This would be an example of a really bad type of side effect that you’d only find out after taking the drug - permanent sexual dysfunction (from a hair-growth drug) - and perhaps why the “free market decide” type approach could result in just a ton of lawsuits.
Even though I am not American it’s pretty evident that all major societal and political reforms come from the US whether intentionally or not. Because of this I hope to God that Trump and his subordinates, and more generally the Republicans and right-winged people with power, start reducing regulations particularly in the field of genetics.
Imagine if instead of having to take a drug you could actually have the underlying genetic defect permanently cured. Sounds amazing to me. Then you could have kids and not worry about spreading your disease.
Hmmm… given that genetic changes could permanently mess you up in a serious way (think side effects that never go away) - My vote is to go slow and test a lot for genetic therapies. What if the side effects our community members have when taking medications instantly became permanent as soon as you tried even one dose of the medications? Thats what genetic changes could do.
I don’t think they’d pay much - insurance companies tend to want to know something really works before they pay for it. Of course - these ideas are all just speculation right now.