Randall Parker writes about the biggest barrier to medical advances:

If you read the full article above you'll learn that the first experimental subjects for a Novato California company were in Argentina - not exactly close by. I suspect this says something about medical regulation in America today. The Argentines were on hemodialysis for kidney failure and had what the report below characterized as "typical risk factors for end-stage renal disease". You might expect regulatory agencies to grant greater freedom of action to try out new treatments on people who are looking death in face. But this company used subjects from another country. I fear excessive regulatory obstacles in the way of new treatment development are costing lots of lives.

I suspect that the FDA probably kills more people by delaying the introduction of new drugs and procedures than it saves. But it's like protectionist policies and other interferences with the market--the jobs and businesses that aren't created are an invisible consequence compared to existing jobs that are lost, and a bureaucrat is much more concerned about being blamed for a death that results from a new drug than one that results from its delay, because the latter is just a maintenance of the status quo.

Randall also has bad news about avian flu. It may be easier for it to mutate to affect humans than we thought.

I spent 8 years working in the medical device industry in the US. ALL of our clinical trials were done overseas - and the US legal environment was the reason. Increased FDA regulation also killed our specials and custom business, which in the long run, hurts the development of new products. Medical consumers are the losers, as will be stockholders in American medical device and pharma companies. This is not an industry we want to go overseas folks. The work is good, as are the profits, and we now have a good lead. Let's not blow it, like with did with heavy manufacturing.

You must be too young to remember the horrible tragedy which resulted from THALIDOMIDE, a Drug given to PREGNANT WOMEN. It resulted in babies born with flippers instead of arms & hands, etc., tragic deformities. This THANKFULLY led to changes in the way Medical Drug research was done.

With the BUSH administration, the FDA has become damaged, like everything ELSE he & his idiot neo-con incompetents touch.

How can you make SCIENTIFIC & Medical decisions as a President, when you don't even BELIEVE in Science, don't believe in EVOLUTION, & are in the POCKET of Big PHARMA Lobby?

Do a GOOGLE search for "THALIDOMIDE". It will open your eyes.

So much better, then, that all the medical experiments be done on those overseas foreign people, right Linda?

If the FAA regulated aircraft design the way the FDA regulates drug approval, the airlines would be flying upgraded Lockheed Constellations with eight turboprop engines each, and foreign carriers would be forbidden from flying their jets to US destinations.

The FDA's overly restrictive regulation of drug development has killed far more people than would have died if the pre-Thalidomide regulatory regime had been allowed to continue.