Is the balance of the FDA out of whack in your opinion?

Answer 1

No, not really. There are two sides to the FDA: Food and drug. In the case of food, I've seen them most smartly to address quite a few food problems without interrupting the national food supply. On the drug side, I think they've done well too. I see the FDA held up for attack in cases where (a) they haven't released a drug out of testing soon enough, but I've just as often seen (b) where they've released a drug "too soon", and they get nailed for that. The truth is there's a very delicate balance in testing procedures, and it's impossible to get it 100% right. An example would be the not-too-recent case of Diptheria-Tetanus vaccine, that the manufacturer voluntarily removed from the market. When they released this vaccine, they noted and warned that one child in about a million would present an adverse reaction to this vaccine, and that's exactly what happened. It turns out that one in a million translates into far too many lawsuits to maintain that med on the market, so the company withdrew it, even though it worked for the remaining 999,999. I mention this in that the FDA was aware of the 1:1,000,000 danger rate, but opined that the protection to kids from diptheria and tetanus would save more lives. A hard call to make, isn't it. I've worked with (not for) the FDA in the past, and instead of a pack of bureaucrats, they turned out to be a hardworking, hardheaded bunch of high-minded scientists, with a good understanding of politics. I was impressed.