Anyone who lived through the AIDS epidemic can tell you that having a regulatory body is not automatically better than none at all. FDA bureaucracy and inaction has killed more Americans than WW2. Dissolving the FDA, or at least the gatekeeping branches of it, is a third option that ought to be seriously considered.

I think the more straight forward upgrade to the status-quo would be funding it to a level where it actually does not have to rely on data that the manufacturers / creators supply.

Actually sample testing new and existing products against guidelines as well as being an active participant in trials would go a long way towards moving the FDA from being "paper-pushers" towards a more hands-on regulatory body.

They should also have enough expertise in-house to not rely on lobbists and industry experts for new regulations, when these outside forces by nature have competing interests.

Straight abolishing any part of it without proposing a substitute doesn't strike me as being in the best interests of society.

> Dissolving the FDA, or at least the gatekeeping branches of it, is a third option that ought to be seriously considered.

Yes, so that the supplements industry can run amok on an unsuspecting public. No really, that's just what we need, especially now.

Supplements are already not regulated by the FDA, at least not in the same way as food and pharmaceutical drugs. Basically, manufacturers are responsible for meeting a weak set of regulations for supplements (https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements) and the FDA only gets involved if they sell adulterated products. Nearly all supplements sold in the US have mandatory disclaimer statements (https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements-guidance-docume...) to make clear that the FDA has not evaluated their function.

I called out the gatekeeping job of the FDA specifically. The agency does two things: (1) blacklist food products with deceptive or harmful ingredients or advertising, and (2) whitelist the medications you’re allowed to put in your body, with or without the assistance of a doctor.

It’s (2) that is the problem. With informed consent, you should be allowed to put whatever you want in your body without going to jail. It’s your body.

(2) is not a problem, it is to prevent problems. If you think (2) is a problem you are probably doing something very stupid.

History says otherwise: https://www.cato.org/blog/challenging-moral-authority-fda-le...

Quoting libertarian think tanks in order to further libertarian bollocks viewpoints isn't going to move the needle.

It really is disheartening to see such willful political bias. The article in question spends much of its time talking about the "ACT UP" movement, which was a movement headed by LGBQT political activists marching against the FDA, yet here you are brushing it off as if this is some partisan issue because it's an article written by someone with different political bias than yourself.

I don't think anyone was trying to do anything other than "score points off the FDA" - which is to say, you apparently agree the article is a good source for showing the FDA has had obvious failures in the past.

> ...you should have a look to see who you're arguing with.

Am I supposed to recognize you somehow? Either way, I don't really know how to react to this - is your blog or the companies you're affiliated with supposed to make you immune to political bias somehow? You'll have to forgive me as my initial impression was that you're trying to flex on the internet, but I feel like that's a very uncharitable interpretation on my part so I'll default to assuming that's the wrong interpretation.

Whatever you may think of yourself, you have demonstrated severe political bias in this thread by outright dismissing articles without reading them based on the perceived politics of the hosting organization.

FWIW I didn’t know or care the source of the article I shared. I just literally picked the first result in google that covered the history of ACT UP and the FDA, after skimming to make sure it seemed accurate.

> I just literally picked the first result in google that covered the history of ACT UP and the FDA, after skimming to make sure it seemed accurate.

Ah, the good old 'argument by google search'. Yes, what could possibly go wrong with that. You are now arguing in bad faith, I hope you appreciate at least that much.

How am I arguing in bad faith?

I’m deeply familiar with the actions of the FDA during the AIDS crisis, having studied it in college, read books, watched documentaries, etc. But I can’t convey that info through a HN comment, so I sought out an internet article which I first skimmed to make sure it got the facts straight before linking to. Did I violate some convention of discourse on HN in doing so?

You're not arguing in bad faith. You're being gaslit by someone who has already devolved to name calling in this thread.

Cherry picking cases to prove that an entire institution should somehow be disbanded in spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary is arguing in bad faith. That you disagree because you and the other commenter here agree on the basic premise that you both believe FDA is bad and should be disbanded doesn't change that.

Then google “fda aids drugs” and pick your favorite source. This is, at this point 30 years removed, a non-political historical issue with objective facts.

No, there is simply many years of progressive insight. The FDA, like any institution isn't perfect, they got stuff wrong in the past, they'll get stuff wrong in the future. But overall they are a very large net positive, and to argue the opposite is usually accompanied by a mindset that would love a world without all those pesky rules and regulations.