8/25/2008 PERMALINK
Number killed annually by FDA bureacrats skyrocketing
The tragic death toll caused by the FDA bureaucrats keeping treatments that save lives unavailable in America for years and years after they are available in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, just keeps rising. As FuturePundit recently pointed out:

Why do terminally ill patients have to wait so long to get access to the only treatments that hold any promise of saving their lives? And why is it not their right to decide?
The problem has been magnified in recent years as the number of new drug approvals has fallen dramatically. The FDA approved just 16 new drugs last year, and is on pace to approve only 18 this year. That's down from a high of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997.
After a few high-profile drug scares, such as the 2004 withdrawal of Vioxx from the market, FDA officials have become gun-shy about approving new products. After all, the agency receives scathing criticism from Congress and the press when an approved drug turns out to be more risky than expected -- but rarely for keeping beneficial ones off the market.

It is likely that tens of thousands of additional deaths will occur this year as a result of the work of the Luddite Lunkheads at the FDA. And you can just forget rejuvenation and life extension therapies, because the FDA doesn't even have a category for those types of treatments, and no category sends the signal 'das ist verboten' to all researchers considering the development of such treatments ... more