FDA Bureaucrats Are Hurting Patients—But Times May Be Changing

by Mark Flatten
January 11, 2019

Fear and overcaution at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are literally killing people.

FDA regulators fear that they might miss something and approve a drug that has unseen side effects. If that happens, they will be hauled in front of Congress and pilloried in the media. So in their quest for absolute certainty, FDA bureaucrats demand more studies, more tests and more time.

Adjusted for inflation, it cost about $100 million in the 1970s to get a new medication approved by the FDA. Today, it costs about $1.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs alone, and the entire process takes about 12-to-15 years.

Read the full op-ed at the Daily Caller here.

Mark Flatten is the National Investigative Reporter at the Goldwater Institute.