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W. Nicholson Price II (Academic Fellow alumnus) and I. Glenn Cohen (Faculty Director)
The American Interest
October 17, 2014

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From the article:

[...] The FDA’s regulation of drugs is frequently the subject of policy debate, with arguments falling into two camps. On the one hand, a libertarian view of patients and the health care system holds high the value of consumer choice. Patients should get all the information and the drugs they want; the FDA should do what it can to enforce some basic standards but should otherwise get out of the way. On the other hand, a paternalist view values the FDA’s role as an expert agency standing between patients and a set of potentially dangerous drugs and potentially unscrupulous or at least insufficiently careful drug companies.

We lay out here some of the ways the FDA regulates drugs, including some normally left out of the debate, and suggest a middle ground between libertarian and paternalistic approaches focused on correcting information asymmetry and aligning incentives.​ [...]

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Tags

bioethics   biotechnology   fda   health law policy   i. glenn cohen   pharmaceuticals   public health   regulation   w. nicholson price ii