Posts Tagged: NIH

In real life, not so easy to ban BPA (but who said life was going to be easy?)

By Ned Hodgman | Sep 07 2010 at 05:30 | Your take

Denise Grady’s insightful report in the New York Times makes it clear why it’s so hard to remove the plastic bisphenol-A, or BPA, from various products — and from our own bodies.  The reason is America’s general approach to food and product safety.  This approach puts the onus not on industry, but on scientists (in and out of government), who must prove that it a product is unsafe after it has already been introduced.  Grady contrasts our approach to that of the European Union, which favors the “better safe than sorry”  method for approving the use of chemicals people are going to ingest.   Seems like in America, it’s better sorry than safe. (more…)

Topics: Environmental Protection Agency, Food & Drug Administration, Free Agency, Government in My Backyard (GIMBY), National Institutes of Health
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True Fact: Government Agencies Cooperating

By Ned Hodgman | Mar 08 2010 at 09:23 | Your take

By Marci Greenstein

National Institutes of Health chief, Dr. Frances Collins was talking up his agency’s partnership with the Food and Drug Administration on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show last week.  The move is intended to speed up the process for getting drugs from laboratories to the marketplace.  What’s surprising is that this collaboration hasn’t happened sooner.  How often have we heard about patients desperate to get drugs that are successful in clinical trials but are moving at a snail’s pace through the FDA’s regulatory maze? (more…)

Topics: Dept. of Health & Human Services, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Food & Drug Administration, Free Agency, National Institutes of Health
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