The dead are many – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
11 Jun 2014 1 Comment
in economics of regulation, Sam Peltzman Tags: drug lag, Sam Peltzman
I found that the unregulated market was very quickly weeding out ineffective drugs prior to 1962. Their sales declined rapidly within a few months of introduction, and there was thus little room for the regulation to improve on market forces . . . most of the subsequent academic research reached conclusions similar to mine . . .
The carnage from this regulation, I regret to assure you, will continue for a long time . . . the deaths of which I speak are counterfactual deaths, not deaths that can be directly connected to any regulatory malfeasance . . .
the actual victims of the regulation did not swallow a bad FDA-approved pill. They merely failed to swallow a good one in time and never knew what they had missed.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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