[HN Gopher] A Woman Who Stood Between America and a Generation o...
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       A Woman Who Stood Between America and a Generation of 'Thalidomide
       Babies'
        
       Author : dcminter
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2021-02-06 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | This explains about everything you need to know about the ethos
       | of the FDA. It's baked in at a really foundational level.
       | 
       | As a biomedical person, i find the FDAs policies and procedures
       | eminently sensible, perhaps especially when they chafe, and this
       | is why.
       | 
       | I do not envy them their jobs even the littlest bit, but I'm glad
       | they're around.
        
         | k__ wrote:
         | How come, the US has an opiate crisis?
        
           | meekrohprocess wrote:
           | Many American regulatory institutions have crumbled in the
           | past few decades, the FAA being a particularly jarring
           | example.
           | 
           | In some cases it seems like peoples' trust in those
           | regulators may be fueled by nostalgia, but the FDA does seem
           | like one of the few agencies that has retained some measure
           | of independence.
           | 
           | Looking at what has happened in this nation's other
           | industries and institutions, only one crippling decades-long
           | medical crisis doesn't seem all that bad.
        
             | bordercases wrote:
             | That's not an explanation for why the FDA has failed to
             | address the regulatory aspects of the opioid crisis, but an
             | argument for why we should discount or ignore that failure.
             | At the very least - non sequitur.
        
           | formerly_proven wrote:
           | A while ago I posed a similar question and the
           | answers/downvotes made it clear to me why; Americans have a
           | broken model of pain management. Americans think that opiates
           | are necessary to manage the pain from most surgeries, back
           | pain, headaches etc., so, they get opiates to do that, with
           | the _obvious_ and _foreseeable_ catastrophic consequences.
        
           | every wrote:
           | Regulatory capture can be a significant factor:
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
        
       | ficklepickle wrote:
       | While this is great and all, the comments indicate that tons of
       | doses circulated the USA as samples. There are two people in the
       | comments claiming to be survivors from these samples.
       | 
       | If this is true, then the article is incorrect. It appears that
       | Americans were just denied compensation because the drug wasn't
       | approved.
       | 
       | I'm sure the harm would have been much greater had the FDA
       | approved the medication. But it seems unfair to say they were no
       | victims in the USA.
        
         | xiphias2 wrote:
         | The article reports that there were victims. Are we reading the
         | same article?
        
         | dcminter wrote:
         | The article itself states that samples were distributed and
         | that "In the U.S., 17 cases of congenital deformities were
         | reported"
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-06 23:00 UTC)