Do you grow your own food? Make your own clothes? Did you assemble your car yourself from materials you created using your own steel mill and other such basic materials manufacturing plants? You trust private companies every day, every one of which happily states that they want to make money. What's so special about medicines?

This is something I use to wonder about. Isn't it more important that the food we eat be free of harmful toxins (like pesticides or harmful fertilizers?), but there is no agency that is responsible for checking the quality of vegetables or meat (At least here in India). There was an big issue with pesticides (Endosulfan)[1], in my state some time back. But still no government agency bothers to check for vegetables that are being sold to the public. No one bothers to check meat and fish for harmful levels of antibiotics or harmful chemicals.

So my question is, why are not governments spending any effort on this regards, while spending so much money of immunization. Combine with the fact that there is rampant corruption in every level of government, general poor quality of drugs sold in India, past proven incidents with pharmaceutical companies malpractices like faking results of medicine trials, is it too much if I think twice about giving an immunization drug to my kids?

[1]http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1189820/revea...