Why we need reasonable regulation from FDA

With the fumbling by the FDA on the pet food recall and attendant concerns about human food growing, let's pause to consider what the GOP's attempts to damage the government have wrought.

Conservatives tend to view government agencies with suspicion, and sometimes there is good reason. Governments must be constantly watched by a vigilant press and public, a lesson driven painfully home in the US since 2001 and the installation of the Bush administration.

But sometimes it's worth taking a look back. There are historical reasons why the FDA is supposed to protect us. Just as every traffic signal is a de facto marker of where accidents have occured, so too are the agencies and laws that are supposed to protect the public. That's not to say that agencies and programs should remain frozen in time (I'm talking to you, farm subsidies,) but ferocious advocates of utterly unfettered markets do the public a disservice when they ignore history.

The 1937 poisoining of hundreds of patients who were given an elixir of sulfa that contained a poison is a case in point.

Use spread rapidly. Output of sulfa drugs in the United States in 1937—the first year of real commercial production—totaled about 350,000 pounds; by 1940, it had more than doubled. By 1942, it topped an estimated 10 million pounds.

But widespread demand brought tragedy. Deciding that many people would prefer a liquid form of the drug rather than the usual pill or injection, in 1937, S. E. Massengill Co., a small drug formulator in Bristol, TN, mixed up an “Elixir of Sulfanilamide”. For unclear reasons, the solvent used was diethylene glycol. Massengill made no tests on its elixir before shipping it from its plant. Diethylene glycol is very toxic. First news of deaths was from Tulsa, OK; reports quickly followed from throughout the South and Midwest. In all, 108 people died, largely from kidney and liver failure. One final death, by suicide, was the ill-informed chemist who had formulated the elixir.

Under the U.S. food and drug law then in place, the government seized Massengill’s deadly mixture only because it was misbranded; “elixir” implied that the solvent in the bottle was ethyl alcohol. Drug dispensers were required by law to label their products accurately but not to test them for safety. The company was fined $16,800 for its false label.

The lethal concoction did encourage, however, enactment of a much-strengthened food and drug law that was then pending in Congress. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938, which overhauled the law of 1906, stipulated that manufacturers must test any new drug for safety and report the results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Another infamous case, from the 1920's, involved Dr. Brinkley and the goat testicle implants, which I blogged about in December. There you had someone using a radio station that could reach the entire country to promote quack virility operations.

It's true that government regulation can become excessive. However much air travel is a pain today, there's no question that it is much more affordable than it was before de-regulation in the 1970's. But most travellers would probably not want the government to discard safety standards in hopes the free market will magically take care of things.

The same holds true with other things we take for granted, like food and medicine. The doctrine of caveat emptor is not a reasonable one in such cases. Ordinary citizens can hardly be expected to know if their food is contaminated, or if the FDA approved a drug despite serious questions about its safety.

We have a perfect example of what a completely unregulated free market looks like: the illegal drug trade. You don't need a doctorate in economics to understand that in competition, somone will always cheat if the economic benefit is great enough. Even honest businesses can face pressure to cut corners if their competitors are doing so. And as the pet food recalls show, in an international market there is in fact more need for regulation to protect consumers.

Someone has to be the referee, and in a democratic society that someone is the people, acting through the government they elect. By bringing an extreme ideology to bear against the people, the Bush administration has now rendered the population subject to potential food and medical related catastrophes that are entirely preventable. Heckuva job, Georgie.

It's not just Republican corruption that is the problem. The cozy relationships industries have with lawmakers is a huge problem, and can cross the aisle as well. But the broad difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the GOP wants the government to be broken, ala Grover Norquist and his infamous "drown it in the bathtub" comment. It's what they stand for, and as we will see for the next decade or so as we try to repair the damage, it's what they do.

So the next time you hear a conservative railing against government regulation, ask yourself what would happen if that regulation went away. And enjoy your meal.

MORE-- With props to Daily Kos diarist SusanHu, we now see that a criminal probe has been opened to look into the food scare:

The Food and Drug Administration has opened a criminal investigation in the widening pet food contamination scandal, officials said yesterday, as it was confirmed that tainted pork might have made its way onto human dinner plates in California.

More than 100 hogs that ate contaminated food at a custom slaughterhouse in California's Central Valley were sold to private individuals and to an unnamed licensed facility in Northern California during the past 2 1/2 weeks. The hogs consumed feed that contained rice protein tainted with melamine, the industrial chemical that has sickened and killed dogs and cats around the world.

While it appears that particular instance of contaminated pig feed may not impact a huge geographical area, it is certainly a concerning development.