1mo ago

Is the FDA good or bad?

When I see "the FDA has stated..." I automatically think it is probably a corrupt conclusion bought by some powerplayer to maximize their own profit instead of having to do with whether the statement is true or not. I've always viewed FDA as basically a council of a bunch of power players on boards of Big Capitalism companies like Pepsi that make decisions based on control and market share rather than health.

but I see posts now about how trump attacking FDA equals bad. So is my view of FDA wrong? Are they noncorrupt? Are they a necessary evil? Should they be thrown in a volcano and remade?

32 comments

Is the FDA good or bad?
This is a false dichotomy.
Are they a necessary evil?
Framing things in moralistic terms just further obfuscates things.
The FDA is an enormous organization. It contains contradictions. It contains multitudes. Yes it is in a variety of ways compromised by the capitalist class, but that doesn’t mean the entire enterprise is without value. Black and white thinking isn’t going to cut it here.
Should they be thrown in a volcano and remade?
If you remade the FDA from scratch under capitalism, the result would be roughly the same, because the structures of political power would still be the same.
- I think you're confusing "false dichotomy" with "question". You could argue this if they were talking more in depth about the organisation. But that's not what's happening here
  
  A question framed as having a only two possible answers is a dichotomous question, and if the answer doesn’t fit that framing then the framing is false. It’s the wrong question to ask.

Ideally the FDA should not be swayed by business interests, but everything controlled by our government is. That said, you want the FDA to exist and protect us from bullshit snake oil products and keep corporations from lacing our food with cheap poisons and carcinogens.
Trump gutting the organization makes it go from "could do better" to "actively subverting its own purpose."
- everything controlled by our government is
  The question's been beggared.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Food_and_Drug_Administration provides some historical context.
You can also read The Jungle by Sinclair
Without the FDA, you're going to get sawdust in your bread and worse.
- we would get food poisoning A LOT more without them too. Them wanting to deregulate the food industry is terrifying to us who know the horrors of hugging a toilet for 4+ days
- I'd like to specifically highlight the Swill Milk Scandal also.
  The New York Times reported an estimate that in one year, 8,000 infants died from swill milk. The milk from swill-fed cows, produced in dense urban areas and often priced as low as 6 cents per quart, was affordable to most of New York City's poorest residents. Swill milk dairies were noted for their filthy conditions and overpowering stench both caused by the close confinement of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cows in narrow stalls where, once farmers tied them, they would stay for the rest of their lives, often standing in their own manure, covered with flies and sores, and suffering from a range of virulent diseases.
  Sound familiar?
  The Tammany Hall politician Alderman Michael Tuomey, known as "Butcher Mike", defended the distillers vigorously throughout the scandal—in fact, he was put in charge of the Board of Health investigation... Tuomey assumed a central role in the ensuing investigations and ... shielded the dairies and turned the hearings into one-sided exercises designed to make dairy critics and established health authorities look ridiculous.
  Sound familiar? However people were so enraged that eventually laws passed regardless, and then finally at the federal level.
  Most people don't know about it, but this was basically THE incident that led to the modern FDA. It keeps coming up too. Recently we've had the raw milk fad, but also various melamine adulteration incidents (melamine is used to fool modern protein assays, but is basically the 21st century version of swill milk). There's also occasional "grass roots" efforts to loosen the regulation on milk labeling, ostensibly for plant based milks, but I am suspicious this is astroturfing by the dairy industry because it's exactly what they've been fighting for since the Pure Food and Drug Act passed.
  
  wow fascinating. amazing that i just heavily wiki'd this stuff and didn't come across swill milk at all.
  and does sound like the corrupt normal way that the dairy industry would have their own person in charge of the investigation.
- Dr Harvey and his Poison Squad are a great read as well

Let say, hypothetically, a regulatory agency like the FDA, lets 50% of bad thing get approved.
Well what happens without the FDA?
100% of the bad things will be legal to sell.
So do you still want an FDA even if they are corrupt and let 50% of bad things go through?
And the FDA lets way less than 50% of bad things go through (I don't have an exact number tho).

It's innately good, but currently it's swayed by corporations to allow things that are questionable. Corporations want it gone so consumers have no protections and they have the ability to use any cost cutting processes, harmful or not. Think hydroxychlroquine and Ivermectin during covid. Things like sugar pills could be sold as a cure for hypertension and people will die.
Your ability to question anything Trump says is a good thing. Usually, just go by the opposite of what he says.

FDA is intrinsically good but currently does its job below expectations. Doesn't mean that it's bad, just means it's not doing enough. And without FDA, things can and will get significantly worse. Things can always get worse.

That statement is there because the company selling that milk is advertising that it is rBST free. It is illegal to make health claims for a product without proof and it can lead to large fines and forced product withdrawal. The disclaimer protects the company from any false advertising claims.
- This is also the reason why you frequently see the phrases "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA" and "Not intended to "diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease"

Is the American FDA perfect? Of course not. but them existing is a net positive because without them your food would have literally no safety standards in the US. Even if theyre corrupt and incompetent they can still be a net positive when compared to just letting companies put cat piss in your koolaid if they want to.

Remember that the stories you hear are always going to be the ones that are most controversial, otherwise they would not be news. The day in day out work of the FDA is enormous and most of it, I believe, necessary for the level of trust in what you find on the shelf, what you're doctor recommends, what your pharmacist hands you, that we enjoy.
I don't want to have to know my farmer, my chemical compounder, my importer, my distributor, my restaurant chef, etc, etc, for every stupid thing just to avoid eating lead or feeding hepatitis to my kids.
The loudest complaints-- selling raw milk is technically illegal? they allow red food coloring as long as you list it in the ingredients? they may or may not allow you to call oat liquid a "milk"?-- sound pretty small to me, and also even these issues are reviewed and discussed more or less transparently in response to people's concerns.

had never looked up rbst but doing so right now and right from the start here's this.
i assume tho that the profit from rbst milk caused the FDA to overlook something like that. Anyway, this is my point. When the FDA states something, i just assume they are doing it to sway the public for the sake of allmighty capitalism; and that them specifically going out of their way to say something actually implies the opposite is true.

Good. Next question.

I was told - but I never fact checked it - that the FDA actually has less than 10 employees. Everyone else is an outside contractor. And if it is true, I do think it needs better organization.
If an agency that has to protect all consumers is organized this way, that's really worrisome.
- That is a fascinating rumor, but not at all true. Good on you for being skeptical. Otherwise, I personally know all FDA employees plus a mysterious eleventh.
  
  The person was an actual contractor agent of the organization, doing inspections and such flying state to state - that's why I gave it more credibility than heresay. But look how far it got me. Lol
- the FDA actually has less than 10 employees. Everyone else is an outside contractor.
  You can search for FDA employees here (the US Government has a lot of transparency around employees). Also, it wouldn't surprise me to find a lot of contractors in scientific and technical roles in the FDA, the FedGov uses a lot of contractors. I actually spent time, at a site, first as a contractor and then as a direct employee. The only thing that materially changed was whether or not my badge said "contractor" on it. I literally sat in the same seat and did the same job. Pay was pretty close, but the benefits were way better. The line between contractor and govie was pretty blury and more of a running joke than a real wall. Maybe that was just the departments I worked for, but I suspect my experience was more typical.
  
  Fascinating. Thanks for the information! :) Now I know way more than ever wanted :D

As bad as Trump is, being not-Trump does not equal good. Politics in the US is not a bad/good, Trump/not-Trump binary. Even if the two political parties in power would like the masses to believe it.

32 comments