Another Example of Regulation Failure

Seth Roberts notices the existing double-blind placebo-controlled tests end up wasting us a lot of money.

Congratulations, your expensive new medication is more effective than a sugar pill, but we have no idea whether or not it's better than cheaper medications that are already on the market.

The requirement might have been — but isn’t — that a new drug be better than pre-existing alternatives. Many aren’t but they are always more expensive — not to mention more risky.

So, thanks to regulation, companies have a vested interest in proving their new product is better than a sugar pill, but NOT whether or not it's any better than their competitor's products? I can't see how such an idiotic situation would become standard in a free market because people have a natural incentive to develop products that are better than their competitors. With this regulation in place, I suppose the main attraction to bringing a new product to market is having the cachet of being the new product in the market.

The pro-growth mentality does reach into agencies like the FDA for a simple reason; they need a reason to continue existing. They shouldn't exist in the first place, but if people stopped making stuff they could regulate, then they'd really have trouble justifying their existence. The amount of resources misallocated through this regulatory process is truly mind-boggling, especially because of how expensive it is to develop drugs these days.