Remember the raw oyster ban from a recent Regulation of the Day? I am happy to report a partial victory (hat tip to Jacob Grier).
The ban, due to take effect in 2011, has not been repealed outright. But, in response to public outcry, it has been delayed:
The FDA announced it would commission a study to explore alternatives to reducing the illness vibrio vulnificus, and also do an economic analysis of how the ban would impact the oyster industry.
“Before proceeding, we will conduct…
The FDA is getting into the business of mixing drinks. Employing a dangerously questionable array of regulatory powers, the agency is trying to determine if the the combination of caffeine and alcohol is a tempting and harmful brew for underage drinkers. Rather than do any investigative work of their own, they are giving producers of these drinks 30 days to prove that the alcoholic energy drinks are safe.
What makes them think these drinks are not safe? As difficult as this is…
My colleague Richard Morrison brought to my attention a new FDA rule that requires oysters harvested between April and October to be sterilized before they are eaten. The goal is to prevent a rare – and sometimes fatal – bacteria from harming anyone.
An unintended consequence is that the state of Louisiana is up in arms. The sterilization rule essentially bans raw oysters, a local delicacy, for seven months every year. Sterilization also affects the flavor of cooked oysters, a common ingredient…
Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration, working with the Institute of Medicine, has been considering a change in the regulatory status of salt. The FDA cannot currently restrict the amount of salt that can be added to processed foods, and the proposed change would allow them to do so.
Advocates of the proposed regulation, like former FDA commissioner David Kessler and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, argue that reducing the sodium in foods would improve people’s health…
Your host Richard Morrison and guest co-hosts William Yeatman and Ryan Young conspire to bring you Episode 64 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with the big vote on health care legislation, squeezing more energy from the ground and the warming that wasn’t there. We continue with the British expense scandal, and the Obama administration’s love for new rules and regulations.
New York Times reporter Gardiner Harris has a front page article in today’s paper on the head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Oncology Drug Products, Richard Pazdur. As the article notes, Pazdur has come under severe criticism in recent years for obstructing the approval of numerous innovative cancer drugs. Some of this criticism is unfair, and Harris is clearly attempting to defend Pazdur and the FDA, while proving the critics wrong. After all, Pazdur has implemented reforms that…
Today, CEI filed comments (link to PDF format) on a draft FDA guidance document advising prescription drug manufacturers on how to comply with regulations requiring the presentation of risk information in drug and medical device advertisements. Although we disagree in principle with the current regulatory regime that requires almost encyclopedic presentation of risk information any time a manufacturer communicates the name of a drug and any mention of benefits in promotional materials, these comments focused on the FDA’s failure to treat the Internet and…
The FDA is now moving towards banning a smoking alternative that could save many lives. Every year, millions of smokers like my wife try and fail to quit, because they are nicotine addicts. Many later die of smoking-related illnesses, which are caused by the smoke, not the nicotine. The obvious solution is to give smokers access to less hazardous products that provide the nicotine they crave without the deadly smoke, like chewing tobacco, or, better yet, electronic cigarettes or snus. (Electronic…
Yesterday, Obama signed into law a deceptive FDA “tobacco regulation” bill that will undermine public health in the long run by protecting cigarette manufacturers against competition from less deadly tobacco products (which is why the nation’s largest cigarette maker supported the bill). As Bill Godshall of Smoke Free Pennsylvania notes, the bill “protects the most hazardous tobacco product (cigarettes) from market competition by the least hazardous (smokefree) tobacco products, as it:
* bans all new and recently introduced smokefree products, while keeping…
The “smokes” may be different, but the Food and Drug Administration’s ever-vigilant watch to keep us safe from ourselves in its quest to quantify and purge all health risks from society continues. Their latest target? Smokeless cigarettes, or so called “E-cigarettes.”
The devices in question utilize an atomizer to vaporize a nicotine and propylene glycol (a substance commonly found in fog machines) solution that the user inhales and exhales as a vapor. Since there’s no tobacco, combustion, smoke, or smell involved,…
Congress is about to enact a bill to subject tobacco to FDA regulation. Mark Berlind notes one anomalous feature of the bill: it would deny companies’ protection against “tort liability — even if they rigorously follow every FDA rule.” We wrote earlier about how FDA regulation might actually undermine public health by making it harder to market to smokers other tobacco products, like snus, that are not as lethal as cigarettes.
As Jacob Sullum notes, the law will require snus “to carry a…
My colleague John Berlau wrote a nice obituary of mutual fund pioneer Jack Dreyfus that was published in Investor’s Business Daily earlier this week. One thing John points out that few readers are likely to have known about Dreyfus is his long-time advocacy of more liberal FDA regulation of off-label drug promotion.
FDA has the statutory authority to regulate promotional materials distributed by pharmaceutical companies about their products, and the agency imposes a near-total ban on distributing information about unapproved, or so-called…
The 67-year old Vice President will be undergoing an outpatient procedure — an electrical shock — to restore his normal rhythm today at George Washington University Hospital.
You’d think with a Vice President with a history of heart trouble and so many Americans suffering from chronic heart disease and sudden cardiac episodes, the Food and Drug Administration would get around to approving safe, reliable medical devices like the cardiopump.
What’s the cardiopump, you ask? Let’s let a certain Volokh brother explain:
The cardiopump, manufactured by Ambu International…
Courtesy of Ivan, I’ve been directed to this press release from the Weston A. Price Foundation decrying a U.S. FDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture crackdown on purveyors of “raw” — that is, unpasteurized — milk. Now, I have very little sympathy for people who think raw milk is perfectly safe and/or somehow better for us than pasteurized milk. After all, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable scientific breakthrough and public health miracle for a reason: raw milk can…
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