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I think I'll join you for a dunk in the crazy tank. The mere act of governments discussing regulating drug prices kills people.
[/ QUOTE ]If you read the two BMJ links (both of which are based on the authors' experiences of uncovering fraud by the pharmaceutical industry), you'd know that rampant profiteering kills people; it's very very easy to cheat a drug trial and then spin the results.
It was the
Vioxx scandal that led congressional hearings and to the most recent change in policy by the major medical journals; they no longer publish industry-sponsored research unless the authors can show they were contractually free to publish (as described by the ever ethical Dave Sackett
here).
It's intensely naive to think that unregulated private industry never cheats its customers. Taking that view in medicine kills people. Presumably, you agree that doctors need professional oversight for competency and ethics? Why not the salesmen who make such vast profits selling them medicines?
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Oversight? Yes. Government oversight? No.
The FDA is entirely to conservative. If you want a perfect industry that never has faults, good luck. If a drug is released that harms some people, the FDA is on the hook. If they take too long to approve a drug, or don't approve it at all, there is no way of knowing how many people that die could have been saved. The design of the FDA produces standards of approval that are entirely to risk averse.