[quote=harvey]It seems odd to say you don’t care if an idea works but just want to try it out. We have a thousand years of history where just about everything has been tried.[/quote]

The US wouldn’t even exist in its current form if the founding fathers had decided to not try something that had never been tried before.

[quote=harvey] … thalidomide before and that’s a very powerful example that carries more weight with me than someone who is simply frustrated with the FDA because they can’t sell their product that hasn’t even been tested. [/quote]

It isn’t a matter of frustration. It can be a matter if life or death. Have you noticed that the cost of drugs is a little out of hand lately? The cost to the taxpayers of the FDA may not be overwhelming, but the cost to the manufacturers who have to deal with them is massive.

Seems to me there are millions of poor people who would be willing to live with less rigourous testing standards if they could just get their medicine at a lower price. You may be happy that someone is testing your products, but why should your standards be forced onto others who may not be able to afford drugs that require the kind of overhead associated with FDA testing. So you and the government dictate the market to be such that a certain class of people suffer because you want to control their lives and tell them what they can and can’t buy.

Thalidomide didn’t prove that the FDA was needed. It proved that better testing was needed.

So, the answer is – appropriate recourse for mistakes, not government dictating what can and cannot come to market.