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Store: An Independent Institute Book
HAZARDOUS TO OUR HEALTH?
FDA Regulation of Health Care Products
Edited by
Robert Higgs
Foreword by
Joel J. Nobel
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is one of the most powerful of federal regulatory agencies, if not the most powerful. It regulates over 25% of all consumer goods sold in the United States. It makes decisions on a daily basis that affect the lives of millions of people.
While the FDA was created to protect the public, how well is it fulfilling this mission and whose interests is it actually protecting?
In this book, four outstanding scholars examine how the FDA accumulated its enormous power and what effects it has had on the public. It also explores who actually benefits and loses from FDA actions, and whether alternatives exist to safeguard the health of Americans. This book raise serious questions about the wisdom of giving policing power with little oversight or appeal process to scientists, as the FDA currently does. It also argues forcefully that the FDA unnecessarily delays beneficial medicines and medical devices, many of which are routinely available in Europe, from being available to Americans.
Detailed Summary |
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Contributors
Ronald W. Hansen, Robert Higgs, Joel J. Nobel, M.D., and Paul H. Rubin.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry
- Chapter 2: FDA Advertising Restrictions
- Chapter 3: FDA Regulation of Medical Devices
- Afterword: Diminishing the Harm
Praise for Hazardous to Our Health? “This powerful book, Hazardous to Our Health?, examines the issues from a rarely voiced and considered viewpoint. The history of the FDA’s growth to power is accurate, and the insights are provocative. Those insights will, inevitably, become a critical part of the national debate about FDA reform and contribute to its vital balance and the welfare of patients.”
—JOEL J. NOBEL, M.D., President, Emergency Care Research Institute
“Hazardous to Our Health? adds invaluable insights into regulatory deficiencies and their possible solution.”
—LOUIS LASAGNA, M.D., Dean, Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences, Tufts University
“As Hazardous to Our Health? makes clear, the FDA’s record is execrable. Given the overwhelming incentives to inflate and misuse its power, administrative reform is no option. This book makes the case for individual freedom.”
—THE FREEMAN About the Editor Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy and Editor of The Independent Review at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California. In addition to Hazardous to Our Health?, his books include Arms, Politics and the Economy, Crisis and Leviathan, The Transformation of the American Economy 1865-1914; Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914; and Emergence of the Modern Political Economy.
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