Cherios Vs. FDA
Apparently, since Cherios has been running commercials saying that a study has shown that eating Cherios as part of a healthy diet can help lower your cholesterol, the FDA has decided that Cherios is a drug. According to this WSJ article, the FDA claims that only drugs can make those claims, and if they want to continue making these claims backed by a peer reviewed clinical study, they must file a new drug application. This is the same new drug application that has destroyed and slowed so many potentially helpful drugs, that has left so many dead because it takes so long to go through the bureaucratic morass required to get a license necessary from the FDA to sell a new drug to the public.
Now, I’m not too religious, but my god, what is wrong with this country. Oh, I know, the government wants to control how everything is done everywhere. In the name of the public safety, the government regulates almost every aspect of our lives. It tells us how we have to build a house, how we build a car, how we make a new drug. Do you ever wonder why we are still driving cars with basically the same technology as Henry Ford was pumping out 100 years ago. It is not merely because of the greed of the oil companies. It is not because the combustion engine is the best engine out there. It isn’t even that humans just can’t figure anything better out. For progress to happen there must be diversity in the industry. Not only that, but people must be allowed to take risks on new technologies, even with their own lives. If somebody wants to buy a new unproven technology, they must be allowed to do that, otherwise industry will continue to run at the snail’s pace that it is currently traveling at.
But I digress. What is wrong with a food company extolling the healthy benefits that it has, especially when it has a strong peer reviewed clinical study backing its claim? It isn’t fraud. There really was a study. And it isn’t a drug, so why would the FDA try and claim it is. Let me let you in on a secret that it appears the FDA might not know. There are things other than drugs that can make a person healthy, and yes that can even cure certain diseases. You think they would have put at least one person in charge of this idiotic (not to mention unconstitutional) government agency that knows that. Only idiots must gravitate to the government regulatory business.
