Comment by maushu
Sometimes red tape is good in situations that might affect a large part of the population. Remember the whole Thalidomide situation.
Sometimes red tape is good in situations that might affect a large part of the population. Remember the whole Thalidomide situation.
It is unfortunate that the only way to get through the regulatory process is copious $ - but it does work. If this project were better funded, it would likely have gotten through.
There is an entire political party representing something like half the population of the US dedicated to shrinking the regulatory apparatus, including the FDA. That doesn't sound like career security to me.
When red tape makes drug development and testing impossible, as it did here, the system has ceased to benefit humanity and is causing nothing but stagnation and long-term suffering (by virtue of holding back potentially life-improving or life-saving treatments.)
Enabling medical progress is far more important in the long term for our species (and to reduce suffering) than adding the umpteenth killswitch/safeguard for an ostensibly safe medicine.
But FDA regulators have no incentive in the positive direction, only in the negative direction. The more drugs they deny, the less likely they can be blamed if something goes wrong; the more requirements they add, the more secure their careers - humanity's medical progress be damned.