Abolish the FDA… And Then What?

The FDA inaccurately dates its origin to when President Teddy Roosevelt signed the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, which simply required, “truth in labeling.”

The FDA didn’t get its name until 1930 and it wasn’t until FDR signed the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that it got its preeminent power to stop new drugs from entering the market until it granted its approval.

This pre-market review has expanded over time — particularly with the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendment — where in the name of protecting consumers the review has become longer, costlier, and broader.

You see, once a government bureaucracy is born it’s hard to kill it because as it ages it can leverage your tax dollars and its proximity to power to pressure Congress to be “pragmatic.”

And Congress is pragmatic because the average voter is pragmatic, i.e. educated by government authorities into accepting that forcing people via the barrel of a gun (the means) is acceptable so long as its done in the name of some esoteric goal (the ends) where the next thing you know the federal government is funding studies on how cocaine affects the s*xual habits of quail.

Underlying our indoctrinated neocortex is our ape amygdala where we can be sent into an irrational panic with a sprinkle of, “If we abolish the FDA then everyone will die from food poisoning and experimental drugs!”

This isn’t to say there aren’t legitimate reasons to keep the FDA, but you’d think given the reflexive poo-pooing to its abolition that 99.99999% of humans hadn’t existed without it or that 95% of humans today don’t live under its domain and where some countries don’t even have a medical regulatory process. And even in the US, there are numerous foods and drugs that don’t require FDA approval and yet you probably aren’t any the wiser: compounded drugs, cosmetics, infant formula, medical food, food additives, supplements, etc.

So there are three main reasons to abolish the FDA…

The FDA costs $8 billion per year with 18,000 employees. Some say this is such a small part of our federal budget that it isn’t even worth getting rid of, but to put it into context that’s enough money to give $1 to every human. And then all its employees who are disproportionally…