US Medicine: Death by Command and Control Regulation

When I discuss the corrosive effects of regulation on progress in medicine, such as the enormous and entirely unnecessary costs and barriers put in place by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), I usually focus on the research and development side of the coin: the process of creating new therapies. That is greatly impacted, not least because as the system presently stands it is actually impossible to gain approval for any treatment for degenerative aging - no medicine is permitted into the clinical trial system if its purpose is to treat old people to reverse some of their symptoms. The FDA doesn't recognize aging as a named medical condition that can be be treated, and there is no path short of complete revolution in the regulatory system in the US to make this any different. The costs and prohibited actions due to the FDA propagate back down the fundraising chain. You can't raise venture capital if there's prospect for selling the resulting therapy. It's harder to raise funds for basic research when there's no connection to later commercial activity. There are thus far fewer research groups working on potentially important ways to address aging than there might be, and less press and public understand of what might happen if the FDA were not standing in the way, a hideous roadblock, a ball and chain that stops the research community from improving the human condition. The invisible costs, the therapies that might have existed but do not because of regulation, are alw...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs