Government Regulation is Such a Joke

Well, we know how well giving massive loans to the auto industry has panned out (more of the same wasteful garbage under a bunch of grinning sales people who seem happy not to have sunken the ships as of yet). And we know that lending is continuing down a path into what can best be described as “the mouth of madness.” So once again, why don’t we just let the government step into our lives and pretend it’s taking care of us, while it completely misses the entire objective, with the net result being that lives are either inexorably altered for the worse or lost outright? In this case, we’re talking about prescription drugs, and all their purported “benefits.” The FDA generally makes me roll my eyes. I watch commercials for drugs, and sometimes I don’t immediately get what they’re intended to treat (I may miss the start of the commercial, or read an ad where it isn’t immediately apparent). Then I either read or hear the laundry list of side effects of any given drug, and I wonder something that maybe nobody else does. I wonder if these “treatments” (for really, how many cures are there anymore?) are worse than what they’re trying to help us get rid of. And why is it that these drugs are even reaching consumers, when they’re so absurdly dangerous? There is a birth control drug known as either Ocella, Yazmin or Yaz. And I guess having three names was supposed to compensate for its safety issues – which apparently such advanced nomenclature doesn’t quite grant to a drug. Apparently, it’s caused the deaths of 50 women – and while I personally have no interest in having children, this seems to be a rather “gallows humor” method of preventing births. I guess the company that makes old Yaz decided to go the Terminator route, providing abortion via the death of the mother. That this drug made it all the way through clinical trials just boggles my mind. While 50 deaths out of (most likely) hundreds of thousands of women using a drug is relatively small… I wouldn’t say anything coldly statistical about it around those women’s families. So in short, what we basically have is yet another instance of a supposedly regulatory agency dropping the ball when it comes to expecting companies to do anything for the interest of anyone besides themselves. Maybe I should stop being surprised…