On the upside, there was no lead involved:
Food and Drug Administration inspectors in April found that McNeil Consumer Healthcare, which has voluntarily recalled certain lots of its children’s and infants’ Tylenol products, knowingly used bacteria-contaminated materials to make them, a report posted Tuesday by the agency says.
It is a shame that the invisible hand was not given more time to sort this out. In a true free market, we would have allowed the banks to fail let a bunch of people get sick and die from tainted medicine, and consumers would quickly get the message and the offending company would go out of business. Instead, we get the heavy hand of government stepping in and screwing everything up.
Osprey
They could have afforded non-contaminated materials if they weren’t taxed so much to pay for entitlements.
LittlePig
How the heck are we supposed to evolve if the Gubmint keeps ramming child safety down my throat?
geg6
After the catastrophe that was the W administration (and let’s not leave Bubba out of the loop; he was culpable for a lot of deregulation, too), is there a single industry left in the US that has any sort of competent management or an ounce of awareness of their liability to the public for their products?
I’m beginning to think the answer is a resounding “no.”
We suck and I expect us to suck even worse in the future.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Welcome to Amerixiang! Newest Chinese Province.
Brandon
The invisible hand has already talked. Children’s Tylenol was recalled just 7 months ago for ……bacterial contamination. Ba-dump-up.
Rick Massimo
It is a shame that the invisible hand was not given more time to sort this out. In a true free market, we would have
allowed the banks to faillet a bunch of people get sick and die from tainted medicine, and consumers would quickly get the message and the offending company wouldgo out of businesscomplain to the government that they were going to go out of business and fire all their workers unless they got a massive tax cut, get a massive tax cut on condition that they get rid of the bacteria-contaminated materials, get rid of the bacteria-contaminated materials, cut another safety corner to pay for the bacteria-free materials, and give some (but not all) of their tax cut to several key Senators to make sure the train keeps rolling. Instead, we get the heavy hand of government stepping in and screwing everything up.Fixt.
Michael
@Osprey:
…for welfare Cadillac queens to use to buy T-Bone steaks to feed Strapping Young Bucks.
Trinity
ill baby, ill!
Tonal Crow
“Patent-medicine era” isn’t a metaphor for the GOP, but a deeply-desired destination.
Tonal Crow
@Trinity: Win!
Brandon
@geg6: Why should they care? They’ve got captured regulators and tort reform bitchez!
Chyron HR
If the nanny-state government keeps preventing parents from unknowingly poisoning their children, people won’t have any incentive not to buy tained medicine.
The Grand Panjandrum
The invisible hand giving America a reach around, again.
BombIranForChrist
Frankly, I think more people need to die in general, to free up capital and make the markets more efficient.
Zam
@The Grand Panjandrum: I was thinking more along the lines of a prostate exam.
licensed to kill time
This really pisses me off:
They just put the complaints in the circular file, I guess. Good to know when you call that complaint line that they’ll get right on it, yesiree!
Mark S.
“In a true free market, we would have let a bunch of people get sick and die from tainted medicine, and consumers would quickly
get the message and the offending company would go out of businesshave learned that it was one of two firms had a monopoly on this product, they were too big to fail because of that, and a little known law limited their liability to $5 million.”(I’m not sure if that’s the case, but I’m halfway through this book and that’s been the moral of the story so far.)
ETA: Or as Rick at #6 said.
Brandon
It is also reassuring to know that despite trying to kill babiez and all that, the FDA saw fit to “consult” the company on their “voluntary recall” which they initiated ever so conviently a Friday, when the media cannot even be arsed to report on the weekly incriminating government document dump, so why bother with a company trying to kill sick babiez.
Midnight Marauder
@geg6:
Honestly, I’ve had a similar conversation with a lot of friends over the past few years where I ask them to think about an American institution (government in particular, but any major one really) that gained in stature or reputation during the last decade with the Bush Administration at the helm. There’s nothing that comes close. Not a single government institution, not a single major industry. Nada. Because we’ve had such a short-term perspective as a country for so long, no one even really considers the long-term ramifications of their nonsensical short-term decisions.
The Obama Administration has done a yeoman’s job so far in trying to reverse that trend, but we have to be honest: that’s not going to be an easy feat, by any means. Restoring competency and nuance to American society? Yeah, that’s going to take a while.
slag
@Trinity: Perfect.
ksmiami
I think there should be no regulation of the pharma company, but heavily armed neo-police guys should track the parents who bought the tainted tylenol, ram in their doors, shoot their pets in front of the kids and then arrest the parents for reckless child endangerment… hmm where have I seen this before???
I have noticed that those who rail the most against big government sure seem to like the police state…..
A Guest
OH FFS. Children’s Tylenol and Motrin? This is sickening (excuse the pun).
Brandon
I think we should commend the FDA on their get tough attitude.
Oh. Or maybe not. Since no baby deaths can traced back to this, I am sure if they just send them another warning letter, they’ll get the message.
cat48
Thanks for noticing Mr. Cole that big gubmint regulators sometimes get it right. Pleasant to read after hearing how the almost let the brown terrorist get away–last minute catch not good enough you know!
Bin Laden, et al, roams free but that is ok cause W really tried really hard to catch him. It’s W’s effort we should appreciate. He had to keep homeland safe & fight 2 hard wars……
Tonal Crow
Bidness gets “warning letters” for recklessly endangering millions of people, citizens get thrown in the slammer for growing weed in their own backyards, and Republicans clap and ask for moar.
Poopyman
@Midnight Marauder:
Coupla things:
– The Boosh administration was well on its way to drowning the Federal Govt in -NOLA- a bathtub when it ran out of time, so as they say, Mission almost-Accomplished
– It’s going to be difficult to restore competency and nuance to an American society that doesn’t particularly want either. I’d like to say that that’s hyperbole, but the respect for American society I had while growing up has pretty much been irreversibly destroyed. And that hurts.
slag
For the record, I believe the correct libertarian response would be:
This never would have happened in the first place if we didn’t live in a nanny state that taught us to rely on government to do the job that the free market is supposed to do. And we know this is true because quantum physics teaches us that parallel universes offer an infinite array of possible outcomes, one of which must logically be that the Great Invisible Hand has already created a perfect society of superhuman non-government-needing consumers who have evolved to develop x-ray vision, immunity to all bacteria, and a Vulcan-like intelligence that enables them make the most logical of all possible choices in front of them.
QED, bitchez.
J sub D
It’s a shame that with all the money taxpayers pour into regulation we are still relying on the honesty of manufacturers to protect us.
There are two ways of looking at this
1. We need ten times the amount of regulations and inspections at ten times the cost which might deter unscrupulous businessmen.
2. We are pissing away money in our quixotic attempts to ensure that nobody, anywhere, anytime gets harmed by a negligenly manufactured product.
Based on the past efficiency of DC’s regulatory apparatus, I’m going with #2.
Woodbuster
What’s a few dead babies, when there’s money to be made? Free Enterprise, Bitches!!
cat48
@geg6: There was a link in a blogpost here by DougJ earlier this yr. Jan or Feb about all the science and/or qualified regulating your President has been doing. It was an 8 page New Republic story and it made me feel better. Judis or Crowley wrote it I think.
batgirl
The funny thing is the same people that tell me that we don’t need no stinking regulations, that the free market will take care of everything, also like to place restrictions on my freedom to sue the pants off a company that harms me or my family.
In other words, the consumer is fucked. Nothing free market about that.
someguy
We should put these crooked pigs out of business. I’m pretty amped that the financial reform bill now contains an amendment allowing the biggest six banks three years to wind down operations; we should do the same to big pharma.
J sub D
And the number of dead babies attributed to McNeil Consumer Healthcare products is?
Martin
‘Knowingly used’? And they’re not going to goose-step someone into a courtroom?
If I ‘knowingly put’ bacteria in their product at the Rite Aid, I’d be looking at 5 years, even if nobody was hurt.
Warren Terra
Y’all are underestimating the Glibertarians: actually, it’s not in J&J’s interest to be caught trying to poison their customers, so logically this can’t possibly have actually happened. QED.
someguy
@J sub D:
McNeil’s public relations shop paying you to comment here? Sure looks that way.
Brandon
@cat48: Actually, if you look into this more it actually exposes the FDA for being inept and captured by industry. Let’s be clear, they think effective regulation of a company that is making sick babies sicker is issuing “warning letters”. I am sure that leaves every CEO quaking in their boots. It sure sounds intimidating to be.
Michael
@Chyron HR:
Erin! My honey my baby….
Alex S.
The bacteria weren’t a bug, they were a feature. Of course, you had to pay for them.
Sue
Well, if we’re going to go back to the days when you paid for your health care in chickens, something has to take the place of epidemics.
Forward thinking, really.
blahblahblah
“They can take my life, but they can’t take my … FREEDOM!!”
or something.
Brandon
@J sub D: Anyone that comes into comments here spouting either “whocouldanode?” or “but nothing could be done” or both is clearly not from around here.
Martian Buddy
Look, people, this is America, not liberal fascist France. If you want clean food and drugs, take some personal responsibility and hire a lab to test them for you. Or buy the equipment and take some online courses in microbiology.
And get a spectrometer to test for lead also, too. It’s what John Galt would do.
Karmakin
What’s needed is a comprehensive way of bringing criminal charges against corporations in such a way that acts as a real deterrent.
BP shareholders and upper management should be wiped out. Probably not as severe for J&J, but shareholders/upper management shouldn’t count on any dividends/bonuses for at least a few years. Profits should be zeroed out.
That, is a deterrent. It needs to be existential.
Chyron HR
@J sub D:
Probably the same number of deaths attributed to the Times Square bomber. I guess that means we should arrest the management of McNeil Consumer Healthcare, revoke their citizenship, and put them in a secret prison to be tortured until they confess to bioterrorism?
someguy
@Karmakin:
Zero profits isn’t existential. It’s punishing the shareholders. Besides, corporate officers will just get ‘performance bonuses’ and similar draws that count as expenses to the corporation rather than profit.
You want to make an existential threat, then impose personal criminal liability on the greedy corporate whores who are in charge of these companies, and add a special sentencing provision so that they don’t get minimum security country clubs, but get sent instead to Federal Slam Me In The Ass Prison. And consider making federal regulators who fail to enforce the law similarly liable – like here, where they had notice of a serious problem. That’ll do it.
All this other crap is just patty cake between the regulators and the corporate management, to ensure it looks like there’s accountability but nobody ever really gets held on the hook for this kind of abuse.
someguy
@Karmakin:
Zero profits isn’t existential. It’s punishing the shareholders. Besides, corporate officers will just get ‘performance bonuses’ and similar draws that count as expenses to the corporation rather than profit.
You want to make an existential threat, then impose personal criminal liability on the greedy corporate whores who are in charge of these companies, and add a special sentencing provision so that they don’t get minimum security country clubs, but get sent instead to Federal Slam Me In The Ass Prison. That’ll do it.
All this other crap is just patty cake between the regulators and the corporate management, to ensure it looks like there’s accountability but nobody ever really gets held on the hook for this kind of abuse.
Zandar
Also, let’s not forget the tyranny of the ridiculous standard that a children’s medicine be required not to hurt children. Clearly the problem here is CVS being allowed to sell “Children’s Tussin” as a store brand generic while the more expensive Tylenol brand has to sink money into research and development to cure drug-resistant baby snot.
The answer of course is to abolish the FDA and replace it with strictly voluntary compliance with not making 8 month old babies sick.
someguy
@Karmakin:
Zero profits isn’t existential. It’s punishing the shareholders. Besides, corporate officers will just get ‘performance bonuses’ and similar draws that count as expenses to the corporation rather than profit.
You want to make an existential threat, then impose personal criminal liability on the greedy corporate whores who are in charge of these companies, and add a special sentencing provision so that they don’t get minimum security country clubs, but get sent instead to Federal Slam Me In The Ass Prison. That’ll do it.
All this other crap is just patty cake between the regulators and the corporate management, to ensure it looks like there’s accountability but nobody ever really gets held on the hook for this kind of abuse.
someguy
Multiple comment fail.
The shame…
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
Or we keep the regulations as-is and actually hire enough people to enforce them rather than deciding that the best time to cut inspections is after three major food scares.
By the way, my cat died from melamine-tainted food from China, so fuck you and your decision that we should expect companies to try and poison us.
Gregory
@licensed to kill time:
I don’t know what happened at J&J, but doing so will eventually get you in deep trouble with the FDA, no kidding. A recall is no laughing matter, and you can bet the FDA will have them under the microscope — and it could very well extend company wide and not just at that plant.
J sub D
someguy –
No. I think their practices are despicable. If the government has knowledge of people at McNeil Consumer Healthcare recklessly endangering others they should bring charges.
But that doesn’t happen very often in our regulatory system does it? McNeil will get fined, their reputation will take a hit and we’ll hire more regulators and more inspectors who will still be completely at a loss trying to prevent something similar happening elsewhere.
But you knew all of that, didn’t you?
Bill E Pilgrim
@Michael:
T-Bone steaks, the invisible ham of the free market.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
No, if recent history is any guide, we’ll fire a bunch of inspectors and make the rest double the number of inspections that they’re responsible for so we can cut the number of actual inspections done in half.
What planet do you live on where the government is not only fully funding the current number of inspectors, but also has the required number of inspectors on staff, and will actually hire more in response to an industry failure?
bemused
It’s striking that so many under or barely regulated chickens have come home to roost recently…kid’s drugs, mining, drilling, wall street, etc. I wonder if the sheeples will finally wake up & realize that “the market will correct itself” mode of operation not only doesn’t work but is killing us.
Martian Buddy
@J sub D: You said it. I mean, what harm could a little bacteriological contamination possibly do? And I’m sure you wouldn’t mind taking pills laced with e. coli because after all, it’s just extra protein… right?
Right?
J sub D
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry about your cat. Do you really believe that more government inspections would have prevented it?
When will we decide that the regulatory and inspection regimes are adequate? When nobody, anywhere, anytime gets harmed? Or when only ten, a hundred, a thousand or million are harmed.
How much are you willing to pay in costs incurred by the government and reduced productivity of businesses to save one life.
Is regulation cost effective or merely a sinecure for bureaucrats?
The cranes falling over in NYC last year were inspected by the government. Alas, there are unscrupulous inspectors as well as unscrupulous businessmen. The have an uncanny knack of finding each other.
Maybe we need inspector regulators and regulator inspectors.
Litlebritdifrnt
@someguy: somewhat OT but to your point. Elizabeth Warren was on MJ this morning and said that between 2000-2008 Lehman paid $4billion in dividends to its shareholders, pretty good huh? Until you hear that in the same time period they paid $50billion in bonuses etc., to their executives.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I’d like to find that invisible hand and ram it up the ass of every libertarian fucktard who truely buys into that Randian shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@J sub D: More government inspections and strict enforcement would certainly have decreased the risk. Do we know where the line should be drawn between effective regulation and regulation that stifles business? I have one pretty good guess. More than was going on under the Bush administration… How about that?
Obviously there are no guarantees that if something is inspected it will be safe, but what do you suggest, just giving up because it is hard?
Joe Lisboa
@J sub D: Yeah, but the “pox on both houses” schtick, to paraphrase Gandhi, leaves the whole world with smallpox. Which, in this case, is quite apropos.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@A Guest:
That sounds vaugely familiar for some reason…
Fixt.
gwangung
Ain’t nowhere NEAR that point right now.
Ash Can
I sure as hell hope so. It’s maddening enough that this happened at all, but the fact that it was children’s medicine involved makes me want to choke the living shit out of those fuckwits.
Calouste
@J sub D:
How much less tax do you think is enough to have a 1% chance that your kid dies from poisoned food or medicine?
That’s not a rethorical question. Please give a number.
slippy
@J sub D: Shorter J sub D: Hoocoodanode? Nothing can be done!
Disingenious, probably backed with utterly false assertions, and garbage. FUCKING garbage.
asiangrrlMN
@gwangung: Ditto this. The FDA was routinely undermined during W.’s regime, as were many of the other regulatory institutions that we need in order to function on a basic level. It’s gonna take a lot of time and money to reach a point of competency again.
I am not someone who thinks we can circumvent every bad event (far from it), but we can make it damn nasty on the asshats who knowingly perpetuate this kind of evilness.
The Moar You Know
@J sub D: Governing is hard work. Maybe we should just give up.
I would frankly love to see you in such a society, you wouldn’t last a week. Problem is, I’d have to live in it too.
WereBear
@J sub D: Judging from recent behavior, the amount of inspecting going on is “none” so we can certainly improve on that.
Anoniminous
And from the good old BBC:
So it’s not just US conservatives who are psychopathic, it’s systemic to the ideology.
J sub D
@Mnemosyne:
So your solution is to hire more better inspectors. One per company? One per manufacturing facitlity? One per product production line. One per employee?
How much? Is it cost effective? These are not easy questions to answer and glib “we need more government” claims every time something bad happens is, to be honest, tiresome and intellectually lazy.
This is the not that different to the Lieberman and McCain bedwetting over the failed bomb attempt in Times Square. We need more surveillance. We need more undercover cops. We need to be able to track everybody’s purchases.
Life has dangers. We are unable to eliminate all of them. Attempts to do so are couterproductive to prosperity and liberty. You will note that I have not called for the elimination of government regulations, nor have have I called for the elimination of inspections. I have questioned the wisdom of calls for ramping up the regulatory apparatus every time a dangerous product (or the law enforcement apparatus for dangerous individuals) is discovered.
The law of diminishing returns is valid. I am confident that when I go into the drug store and the grocery store that the products I buy will not kill me or make my hair fall out if used as directed. I’ve felt that way for decades and the increase in budgets for the FDA and it’s ilk every single year (even during the Bushitler regime) has not made me feel safer and I question if it has, in fact, made anyone safer.
It certainly has raised the fortunes of those who do the inspections.
The Moar You Know
@Calouste: Amen.
J sub D, the question has been asked. What is a 1% chance that your kid may die from eating bad food, or getting contaminated drugs, worth to you?
Dollar amounts are preferred, although a percentage of income will be acceptable.
J sub D
@WereBear:
No inspections of drug manufacuring facilities have occured over the last one, two, five, twenty years?
You think that statement might be a bit hyprbolic?
scav
Just wait until they trot out the “Some people” say science shows that lead contamination is GOOD for babies defense in every newspaper article.
And if shareholders can share in the bloody benefits of investing in these dogdamned firms, they can bloody well suffer the consequences of these firms getting their skins peeled off and nailed to the wall.
62across
@WereBear:
I’m not defending J sub D here, but please remember this is an inspecting success story here and not an example of not enough inspection. Company voluntarily recalls its product; FDA doesn’t let it go at that; Inspection reveals company had knowledge of contamination and released the product anyway; FDA comes down on company; public notified.
J sub D
@The Moar You Know:
You like arguing with that man in your head, don’t you?
WereBear
@62across: Well, I was being hyperbolic. Like that’s new here… But yes, I’m glad to hear it’s being followed up on. And I’d like to see some consequences, any consequences. Bad PR is frankly not enough when deliberate decisions were made.
And I won’t argue with the moron anymore… he/she can go live in the woods. Where everything is some wild crazy risk!
J sub D
@The Moar You Know:
My child (if I had one)? Thousnads.
If there is a legal product out there killing one percent of it’s users other than alcohol, tobacco and some FDA approved medicines, I haven’t heard of it.
How much are you (and by extension every citizen) willing to pay to save one random American child’s life?
A dollar is far too high for that.
J sub D
@62across:
And we will see if somebody is criminally prosecuted for reckless endangerment. If somebody died as a result of this malfeasance it would of course be manslaughter.
The Moar You Know
@J sub D: OK, so some random kid’s life isn’t worth a buck to you.
Thank you for letting us know where you stand.
Calouste
@J sub D:
Don’t you think it’s a good deal that the FDA’s budget ($2.3 billion) is only $8 per US citizen per year? That’s a lot less than thousands. Even if you increase the FDA budget 10-fold, you’re still looking at a great deal.
chopper
“Funding for regulatory agencies? Please. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a peanut butter, spinach, tomato and Chinese toy sandwich to finish.”
-jon stewart
Gregory
@Brandon: I work in this industry. An FDA warning letter is no laughing matter. It isn’t a sternly worded letter from a Democratic Senator; it means the FDA is this close from shutting your plant down.
ETA: I have no idea why this comment is tagged onto the previous comment. FYWP.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
Yes, because they didn’t bother to inspect it in the first place. If they had, maybe they could have caught the fact that the Chinese farmers were lacing their gluten with melamine before so many animals died.
Typical conservative response: cut most of the funding to inspections, overload the inspectors and then, when something inevitably goes wrong because there aren’t enough inspectors to actually monitor companies, claim the problem is that there are too many inspections so we have to cut back even more.
someguy
Chopper, fuckin’ sweet Unclosed HTML Tag-Fu there, mate.
A Guest
It just doesn’t make any sense, drift current, that we ought not to expect medical manufacturers to refrain from knowingly adulterating their products.
licensed to kill time
@someguy:
In choppers defense, lately just a plain hyphen before a word can nuke the joint, no tags involved. It seems to start an infinite strikeout loop that cannot be closed by normal means.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
Then you, my friend, are living in a fantasy world. It has apparently escaped your notice that the Tylenol in question here was sold at — wait for it — grocery stores and drug stores. You know, the same ones that you are completely convinced only have safe, untainted products on their shelves.
That means that a product was sold at grocery stores and drug stores that could have killed children even if the parents used it as directed.
But, hey, you didn’t buy that specific product, so why should you care about the safety of any other products from McNeil that you have in your house? I’m sure that only that one factory was sloppy and there couldn’t possibly be contamination in any other McNeil products. I mean, other than the ones that were already revealed several months ago.
Don’t worry, be happy. If McNeil poisons you with contaminated product, your family can always sue, right?
So why bother to inspect at all? You claim that there is already too much inspection and regulation despite the multiple food scares and deaths over the last few years. Why should we not just eliminate it altogether if your plan is to continue the current completely ineffective regime where the tomatoes and spinach that you brought home from the grocery store could kill you?
Jesus, the peanut recall was less than a year ago and you’ve already completely forgotten it.
Platonicspoof
Yesterday I was buying hazelnuts and dried cranberries from a local producer’s store (premature pat-self-on-back) when a plant employee chatting up the sales lady said “we have too many laws”.
His monolog was too disjointed to know why.
I also don’t know why he didn’t realize saying something like that at a food store in front of a customer could cost his company my business.
Which it did.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the information advantage from eavesdropping on drug companies a thousand miles away.
J sub D
@The Moar You Know:
No. I don’t think saving one random kids life is worth spending $300 million on.
Was it the math or the reading comprehension that gave you trouble?
Nylund
Having studied under one of the most famous libertarian economists of the 20th century, I can tell you first hand that many libertarians do actually find the argument that, “if enough people die, then the market will force the offending company to correct their ways” an entirely valid argument.
In fact, my professor said nearly that, verbatim, when discussing seat belts. Yes, he thought that forcing cars to have seat belts was an unjustifiable government intrusion into a car company’s freedom.
I can’t burn any bridges so I won’t name names, but I’ll just say that he is probably the 3rd most famous libertarian economist in the history of (and good friends with the first two, whose names are much more well-known). He’s the guy that “real” libertarians read and condemn the phony less-studious internet libertarians for not reading.
You cannot satire these people. “If enough innocent people die, then the free-market will fix it,” is actually an argument made by preeminent Libertarians casually and without irony.
J sub D
@Mnemosyne:
You worry that when you buy a can of beets or some nyQuil it’s gonna be poisonous? Really?
Is it because of the number of Americans who die every day from toxic consumer products or just because you’re a bedwetter?
Jim Schimpf
I went to their website to check if what we had was one of the bad ones (it was) but on the site you type in this number from the bottle, if you type it wrong (it’s an NDA number and I typed NDA as part of the the #) it just tells you this one is OK. OOPS, false negative.
If you do type it correctly it just takes you down to a picture of the bottle and package. You have the read the fine print above that says if you get shown a product it’s a bad one.
If do go through all this you can then go to another place on the site and get a refund coupon.
WereBear
Know what is really twisted about this kind of libertarian bullshit?
Even though Mnemosyne lost a cat to a deliberately uncaring company (and I’m so sorry about that, I am still burning with rage over that even though I was lucky and you were not) how has the free market sorted this out?
The offending company has gone out of business and the owners have a fine and probation. They kept all the money.
And even with someone on this very thread telling their personal story, someone else is still so much of an asshole that this information does not sway them.
I don’t see anything being sorted out. And the only one the free market punished… is Mnemosyne.
scav
@J sub D: Nah, just apparently someone that disagrees with you, presumably in part on the basis of recent evidence that poisonous substances (and non-functioning brakes, manic acceleration glitches, blah blah blah) have indeed been getting into products — not to mention all the dodgy spinach, strawberries and burgers that people were getting sick from in the not so very distant past. They may also have taken into account the whole deep sea drilling works as described on the press-brochure event into consideration. Funny how people differ in their evaluation of the evidence and in their conclusions.
ThinkBlue
We should have used this rationale in the health care debate.
“You know, Timmy, you’re my son and I love you, but I’m afraid saving your life just isn’t cost-effective. I hope you understand.”
Calouste
@Nylund:
“libertarian economists”. Now that’s a funny one.
J sub D
You folks are a blast.
I question whether increasing regulation and inspection in the market place will be cost effective (not that anyone has tried to say whether the present state is cost effective or what the desired state is other than we just need more) and you start arguing with the libertarian in your heads.
BTW, since someone brought it up, requiring seatbelts as an option I could possibly support although many car models did, at the time, offer seat belts as an option. There was no conspiracy to keep adults from purchasing cars with seat belts if they desired. My parents, making the rational decision that seat belts were more than worth the cost, did.
Mandating that people who don’t wish to wear/use them pay for them anyway, I can’t. I don’t like people trying to run my life and I don’t like trying to run other people’s lives. We’ve gone from making seat belts mandatory, to publicly financed ad campaigns trying to convince people to use them, to making non-use a secondary offense that can be ticketed only if pulled over for something else, to a primary offense and still there are some idiots that don’t wear the damn things.
Mandated interlocks or black box technology that alerts authorities if the vehicle operator or passenger isn’t buckled up is the next logical step to protect people from themselves, no?
ThinkBlue
@J sub D:
Cute little slippery slope you just went down there.
How much spending in the FDA would you deem “cost-effective?” How much spending in the DoD would you deem “cost-effective?” That half a trillion dollar budget in 2001 didn’t prevent thousands of people from dying, so we should just let the free market handle terrorism, right?
scav
Some people don’t judge every single thing in their lives on the single metric of merit of cost-effectiveness, which I guess does amuse others.
Calouste
@J sub D:
I don’t care if you don’t won’t to wear seatbelts. As long as you deposit $100,000 somewhere so all the extra costs for emergency services (compared to when you are wearing a seat belt) are covered in case you get in a car crash. We’ll refund whatever is left to your estate. Alternatively, just put a big sign in your car that they should let you bleed to death in the event of an accident.
Shygetz
@J sub D:
Wow, total math fail. You use, literally, hundreds of FDA-regulated products each year. In order to give you an aggregate increase of 1% per year mortality, each product would only have to kill a tiny fraction of a percent of its consumers each year.
As far as the FDA is concerned, I won’t go into the history in detail here, but suffice it to say–the FDA was instituted for a reason, and a very good one at that. The reason that you (accurately) feel safe when you buy something at a supermarket is precisely because the FDA regulates them. The fact that you’re ignorant of this reality reflects only on you, not on the FDA.
RedKitten
Yeah, I’m pretty fucking mad about this. When your kid is sick, and you go to buy him some medicine at the pharmacy, you assume that the reputable, brand-name medicine that your doctor and pharmacist and friends recommended to you will be safe for your kid.
So then, to find out that it’s not?
Rage. Pure rage.
Whether it’s cribs, or medicine, or high chairs, or car seats, we are TRUSTING those motherfucking assholes with the most precious thing we have in this world. And they are betraying that trust, because they are too fucking lazy and too fucking greedy.
I don’t give a FUCK if it’s cost-effective or not. If you are going to make a product for babies, and are asking mothers and fathers to trust you with their children’s well-being, then you’d BETTER go over your facility and your processes with a fucking nit comb on a regular basis. And if you won’t, then damn straight I want the FDA so far up your ass that they can tell what you had for lunch.
J sub D
@ThinkBlue:
Yeah, that the slope wasn’t fiction or speculation was the best part.
As I pointed out way upthread, measuring the cost effectiveness of regulation is hard. Taking the FDA’s budget for example we have to know how many lives were saved by the regulations and enforcement per dollar. We don’t have that data. We do have fuzzy but useful data that regulation X was issued and injuries/lives lost was reduced by Y. We usually don’t have cost of compliance Z though.
We can reduce auto fatalities drastically by only building cars that can travel at 20 mph maximum. Every mile per hour above that the government allows costs lives. We can hopefully all agree with that. What would would primary, secondary and tertiary costs of a 20mph society be? Apparently too high in spite of the thousands of lives that would be saved in auto accidents.
We also have to know how many lives were lost due to things like life saving drugs whose entry into the market is being delayed by the apporval process. We can do a bit better there after the fact. Drug Q is now curing R people a year but was delayed by S years. R times S is how many cures were forgone while drug Q was awaiting FDA approval. The drug that the government kept off the market because of undesirable effects is also difficult to discern the benefits/costs (it would have helped some people but the FDA decides it’s too risky).
All difficult stuff that people smarter than you and I, with more data than you and I, admit they are making partially informed SWAGs at.
J sub D
@Shygetz:
No math fail at all. I was asked how much I’d spend to reduce the likelyhood of my child being killed by one percent.
I responded with an answer of thousands and that I don’t know of any products, other than those mentioned, that do kill one percent of their users. I dare say you know of none either.
Total reading comprehension fail.
Shygetz
@J sub D: No, dumbass. It would not require any single product to kill one percent of it’s consumers in order to have a one percent consumption-related mortality rate for your children. For example, if your child uses 100 FDA-regulated products, and the FDA decreased the consumption mortality rate of each one from 0.02% to 0.01%, you would have a 1% decrease in your child’s mortality rate due to consumption of these products. So, in other words, it doesn’t require any one product kill 1% of it’s consumers in order to have a 1% mortality rate–it only requires 100 products with a 0.01% mortality rate.
So, either you don’t understand probability, or you just threw in a random non sequitur for shits and giggles. Either way, you look like an idiot.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
An average of 13 Americans die every day from food poisoning. That’s 5,000 a year. 300,000 are hospitalized.
But, hey, I’m sure that none of those 5,000 dead people could possibly have been saved with better food inspections. Not one of those 300,000 hospitalizations could have been avoided. Because shut up, that’s why.
Mnemosyne
@J sub D:
We do know, however, how many lives have been lost when drugs were put on the market without adequate controls — Vioxx, anyone? Or oxycontin, the “non-addictive” drug that Purdue Pharma told bald-faced lies about to get on the market?
So now apparently you’re arguing that a couple hundred thousand extra deaths a year are worth you getting your erection drug a couple of years sooner.
hamletta
My, how the mighty have fallen.
We old farts probably remember the Tylenol killer. People were dropping dead in Seattle or somewhere, and they had all taken Tylenol.
The makers quickly and voluntarily recalled their product, telling retailers to pull it from the shelves and return it until the could find out what had gone wrong.
Turned out some nutbar was going in to stores and tampering with the product, and there was no problem with the manufacturing process.
This was good news for the packaging industry. And John McCain. But I digress.
I was in college at the time, and I had my PR survey course the next semester. We studied the Tylenol case as an example of good practice: getting in front of the story, taking responsibility, etc.
What a contrast.