As I mentioned previously, Daily Camera editorial page editor Erika Stutzman has taken the FDA to task about the United States food supply, most recently Pistachio nuts with salmonella poisening. What she doesn’t do is offer any remedies, simply notes that the present system is broken and that a proposed California law can be easily evaded.
I don’t have a solution either, except that it seems to me the FDA’s regulatory authority is too broad. Recently Popular Science published an article on Phages.
Brillon didn’t need much convincing. The Food and Drug Administration was another story. Since 1963, the agency has mandated a strict approval process for all medications sold in America. Phage therapy has yet to be subjected to it, so Wolcott had to petition his state regulatory board to allow him to administer it only to people who had exhausted all other options. Then, because you can’t find phages in U.S. pharmacies, he had to trek all the way to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to get it. There it’s sold over the counter like eyedrops. He bought, for $2 each, three clear glass bottles, each filled with a liquid containing hundreds of types of phages.
And then there’s this promising cancer therapy, developed by the late John Kanzius who has no medical background by the way, that has been slowed down by the FDA.
Though previous estimates have placed the start of trials to begin in one to two years, Curley felt hesitant to make an estimate Friday, after expressing frustrations with the often tedious U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval process.
It doesn’t seem to me the FDA can easily be “modified” or “bent” to achieve the goals that todays medicine demand. So here’s my suggestion; It should be disassembled and smaller more focused entities should replace it. Also, although I am totally unfamiliar with how it’s done now, their business model should be totally changed. There is no question it is broken.
