What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[CountDeMoney]

Climate change denier running the EPA, an anti-union billionaire running Labor... Seems to me that this administration will be a case of the foxes taking care of the hens. Can't wait until he nominates El Chapo for the DEA or Siege as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

How about some fruit from the Peter Theil Posse, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist libertarian for FDA?

By Peter Sullivan - 12/08/16 05:17 PM EST
Trump's rumored FDA candidate strikes nerve

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/309539-trumps-rumored-fda-candidate-strikes-nerve

"We should reform FDA so that it's approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety and let people start using them at their own risk, but not much risk of safety," O'Neill said. "But let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."

...

O'Neill has also suggested that people should be allowed to be paid to donate their organs. "There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused," he said in a speech in 2009, according to Stat News. ED ALERT

...Beyond his view on the FDA's mission, O'Neill has also been on the board of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to set up floating cities on the ocean to test out new ideas for how government should function.

He also has an interest in anti-aging products and has spoken of "immortality" as a possibility.

"You can tell a lot about an era by listening to what people whine about," O'Neill said in the same 2014 speech. "If we invest wisely in life extension technologies, in 40 years, we'll all be able to annoy our friends with complaints like 'immortality almost never works.'"

Love it.  A gamer bro running the FDA 

[Syt]

Why not Shkreli?

[CountDeMoney]

Why not Shkreli?

Honestly? Just not crazy enough.

[garbon]

Climate change denier running the EPA, an anti-union billionaire running Labor... Seems to me that this administration will be a case of the foxes taking care of the hens. Can't wait until he nominates El Chapo for the DEA or Siege as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

How about some fruit from the Peter Theil Posse, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist libertarian for FDA?

By Peter Sullivan - 12/08/16 05:17 PM EST
Trump's rumored FDA candidate strikes nerve

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/309539-trumps-rumored-fda-candidate-strikes-nerve

"We should reform FDA so that it's approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety and let people start using them at their own risk, but not much risk of safety," O'Neill said. "But let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."

...

O'Neill has also suggested that people should be allowed to be paid to donate their organs. "There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused," he said in a speech in 2009, according to Stat News. ED ALERT

...Beyond his view on the FDA's mission, O'Neill has also been on the board of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to set up floating cities on the ocean to test out new ideas for how government should function.

He also has an interest in anti-aging products and has spoken of "immortality" as a possibility.

"You can tell a lot about an era by listening to what people whine about," O'Neill said in the same 2014 speech. "If we invest wisely in life extension technologies, in 40 years, we'll all be able to annoy our friends with complaints like 'immortality almost never works.'"

Love it.  A gamer bro running the FDA 

What? Oh my. Approve drugs that aren't necessarily even effective?

[Berkut]

Of the ideas floated there, I may not agree with them as ideas, but none of them are of a kind with putting a climate change denier in charge of the EPA.

There is a reasonable argument to be made, for example, that the role of the FDA should primarily be around safety, not efficacy.

[CountDeMoney]

Let the market decide if something works!

[garbon]

There is a reasonable argument to be made, for example, that the role of the FDA should primarily be around safety, not efficacy.

I don't think so...at least not a reasonable argument that leads to a good outcome. After all, if pharma companies don't have to prove efficacy, then could all get up to the sort of chicanery that shows up on the shelves of GNC. I'd rather see a push to safe and effective products and a great way to ensure that is to not allow products to be marketed that don't prove efficacy.

The selling organs one seems like an inability to consider the logical conclusions of such a policy.

Actually I guess that's my issue with what was noted. All seem to be blind to the likely ramifications.

[HisMajestyBOB]

In China, many who can afford it buy Western baby milk formula, medicine, and so on because of numerous contamination scandals involving the Chinese version of products.

Guess we'll be in that position soon.

[Berkut]

There is a reasonable argument to be made, for example, that the role of the FDA should primarily be around safety, not efficacy.

I don't think so...at least not a reasonable argument that leads to a good outcome. After all, if pharma companies don't have to prove efficacy, then could all get up to the sort of chicanery that shows up on the shelves of GNC. I'd rather see a push to safe and effective products and a great way to ensure that is to not allow products to be marketed that don't prove efficacy.

That is a perfectly reasonable argument. But it is on a spectrum of how hard it should be to prove efficacy versus safety. I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the role of the FDA should be more about safety than effectiveness, and the market can determine effectiveness.

It isn't a ridiculous position to take, like arguing that the role of the agency responsible for protecting the environment ought to be dismantling protections on the environment.

The selling organs one seems like an inability to consider the logical conclusions of such a policy.

A lot more organs available for those who need them?

Yeah, that would suck.

Actually I guess that's my issue with what was noted. All seem to be blind to the likely ramifications.

Coming to a different conclusion about the relative desirability of outcomes is not being blind to them. Just having different priorities.

[Eddie Teach]

A lot more organs available for those who need them?

Yeah, that would suck.

There would be hardly any free ones, even donors who died would bequeath them to their estate.

[LaCroix]

the market is absolutely terrible at judging the actual efficiency of pills

[Berkut]

the market is absolutely terrible at judging the actual efficiency of pills

Yeah, I would agree with that. Well, drugs anyway.

I think the way the FDA works now is a pretty good balance.

I am just noting that there is room for argument that is reasonable in one direction or the other. There are lots of smart people who have noted that the FDA approval process is very onerous, and people die as a result.

[Valmy]

I don't get how the market would determine the effectiveness of pills. I mean unless they are over the counter, which are a pretty small minority, don't doctors decide who is prescribed what?

But fair enough. That position is not totally bonkers unlike most of the nominees. But we have had similar people appointed in past Republican administrations and the bureaucracy endures.

[DGuller]

Safe pills lacking in efficacy do kill, just like alternative medicine cures for cancer kill. 

That said, overly stringent protocols requiring one to prove efficacy of medication can also kill, by either barring medication of moderate efficacy, withholding medication of high efficacy for too long, or putting up high barriers to entry for submitting medication for review in the first place.

[Berkut]

A lot more organs available for those who need them?

Yeah, that would suck.

There would be hardly any free ones, even donors who died would bequeath them to their estate.

Indeed. We know this for sure because we've tried it and found that to be true. All the people who donate organs now, 100% of them, would stop voluntary donation, right?

I would argue that right now there is an incredibly unbalanced supply/demand cruve when it comes to human organs. What we *know* is that the demand vastly outstrips the supply.

Having the law mandate that the price paid to those with the organs MUST BE ZERO cannot possibly be the optimal solution when it comes to something that is in fact very sensitive to simply rewarding people who are literally throwing the commodity away because they cannot be bothered.