Word: fda
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...FDA is proceeding cautiously, however. In the absence of any long-term studies, it has limited daily use of the capsules to six months and has warned against their use during pregnancy. Also, the agency noted, use of the capsules does not guarantee that a herpes victim will not infect a sexual partner...
...minoxidil, an anti-high-blood-pressure medication that Upjohn is now testing on baldness. Nor is it opposed to hair transplants. It is forbidding only those obscure salves and creams that falsely promise an end to baldness. "These products do not prevent hair loss or grow hair," said an FDA spokesman, Edward R. Nida. "How you lose or keep your hair depends on how wisely you choose your parents. For the most part it is hereditary...
Fair enough. It is part of the FDA's job to protect us from snake-oil salesmen. The Government quite rightly went to court to make Carter's Little Liver Pills stop implying that they had anything to do with liver function (they are now advertised as a laxative). And we now know that Lydia Pinkham's soothing syrup, once a favorite remedy for women's ills of all sorts, was 20% alcohol. The FDA argues, as do most doctors, that ineffective medications can be harmful because they tend to prevent a patient from seeking effective treatment...
...like some wild-haired rocker, Bruce Springsteen, say. When the Washington Hospital Center asked for volunteers to test the effects of minoxidil, 10,000 hopefully offered themselves. One hundred were chosen; the other 9,900 were left to console themselves with Yuppiegoo and daydreams. And that is what the FDA, ignoring President Reagan's preaching against Government regulation, seems to be heartlessly and needlessly trying to regulate out of existence...
...philosophers tend to be skeptical about these things. Proofs are demanded, testimonies weighed. Still, the streets of Lourdes are lined with stores selling rows and rows of bottled water from the grotto, and the grotto itself bristles with the crutches discarded by those who walked away. How would the FDA rule on the efficacy of such water...