MedPol: FDA to Create Advisory Board on Drug Safety

Which sounds like a good idea, right? So, instead of creating a separate agency to do the extra work, we just realign the Food and Drug Administration, give them a new task that will cost a few ten-millions extra on top of what the FDA already doesn't have the money to do, give them no new funding to do that task, and expect results?

If I remember learning nothing else in my first year of med school, I learned that the FDA has an operating budget less than the University of Michigan. With that budget, the FDA is supposed to monitor all drug development, attempt to oversee all the alternative herbal crap on the market, and even fight the tobacco industry (which it doesn't even bother trying to do, because there's no point without sufficient funding).

Smoke and mirrors. The FDA is one of the few parts of our government that I feel consistently tries to work apolitically and objectively to protect the patient-citizens of our country (with a few very noteable exceptions regarding women's health). And that's saying something, given that the FDA is monitoring drug companies that A) produce great drugs that they deserve to be compensated for so they can continue to research new drugs, and B) produce bad drugs that cause more harm than good but that could still be profitable if they can dupe the FDA into allowing them to kill people for profit.

So FDA Advisory Board on Drug Safety. It might make Congress happy, it might shut up the media, but it's not making Brand New Pill X any safer for you.