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FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

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Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#81

Post by Kristine1975 »

niels_olson wrote: post #65

We have no evidence that surgeons scrubbing before donning gloves makes sense either. In fact, there's an undergraduate experiment where people scrub for up to 3-4 minutes and swab after every 10 seconds and plate the swab. The plates actually show more colony-forming units until about 3 minutes, which is much longer than most surgeons scrub. Which suggests that the scrubbing actually liberates bacteria found at the…

>Which suggests that the scrubbing actually liberates bacteria found at the margin of the stratum corneum.

Wouldn't that mean that after scrubbing the bacteria are no longer there?

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#82

Post by ethbro »

bko wrote: post #73
jcrites wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the first category is "ban something if it's ineffective and there's a tragedy of the commons from using it ". Antibacterial soaps are probably not any more effective than regular soaps, but they might contribute to bacterial immunity (to antibacterials).

Surely there is some negative effects to any recreational drug use, especially alcohol. Theres always a trade off , I just think that the bar to making something illegal should be higher.

Depends on whether one is thinking like a mountain or willing to be blind past the horizon of his or her own lifetime. Sometimes negative effects compound with time or, as jcrites noted, the negative effects of two people doing a thing is greater than 2x one person doing it.

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#83

Post by pdabbadabba »

mindcrime wrote: post #64
djschnei wrote: post #33

I guess I'm weird; I have no idea why the government has the ability to dictate what is and isn't in the soap that I choose to buy. I agree however, anti-bacterial soap is silly. Looks like a lot of people here agree. Looks like a market segment to me. Didn't need a gun, theft, or a jail cell to create it.

You're not weird, in fact, you're thinking about a very interesting question. What is "government" or "law"? From whence does it derive its "authority"? What is a valid application of this thing called "government" or "State"? They're old now, but I think some of the best answers to this are found in the writings of Frederic Bastiat.[1] This bit in particular is relevant: ------ What, then, is law? It is the collecti…

I've always found it remarkable that people find this at all illuminating. I take it the applicability of that passage is supposed to go something like this: I, as a third party bystander, would not have the right to intervene(by force, if necessary) and stop person A from selling person B antibacterial soap. I suppose I get that intuition.

But if you add in more pertinent details, I think we're just left begging the question. What if I sell parson A selling antibacterial soap to person B by misrepresenting the fact that it contains a chemical that will kill bacteria when, in fact, that chemical is ineffective as advertised. This sounds a bit like fraud to me--and it touches on an especially important sphere of life to boot--health and medicine--where fraud-like concerns are especially important.

Do I, as a third party, have the ability to intervene under these facts? I think there's a cogent case to be made that I do. And, at any rate, I know of no simple analysis that one could apply here to make answering the simplified interpersonal case any simpler than the government-regulation case that it is supposed to help us think about.

Of course, it should also be mentioned that there are perfectly good schools of political thought under which the powers of government are not merely the aggregated power of individuals. Here's a thought just to get the intuitions flowing: there might be things that we allow the government, but not individuals, to do because the government acts by way of a deliberative process that can produce more reliable or better justified decisions than we would trust any individual person to make. For example: you might think that it is never acceptable for one person to kill another, even in retribution for a crime, because individual actors can't be relied upon to evaluate guilt and innocence properly, or because their actions would not have the expressive value necessary to warrant such an act. The state, however, is able to organize behavior in a way that largely solves these problems, meaning that there may be cases where it is acceptable for the state to kill even though no individual person could morally have done so. (I actually oppose the death penalty, so I have other objections to this line of argument. But this seems like a potentially useful example nonetheless.)

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#84

Post by balabaster »

gknoy wrote: post #72
bko wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban [something] because it's not effective. Un-ban [something] because it's not really harmful and it's about choice of what I do with my body I never understood which someyhing to put in which category. Perhaps you can argue that no one gets any utility for the thing you want to ban since it's a fraud, but people are spending their money on that thing so surely they get some utility. Not really my place to say

> Ban [something] because it's not effective. In the case of antibacterial soap, it's somewhat harmful: those antibacterial chemicals get in the water supply, and exert extra evolutionary pressure on bacteria, leading to increased chance of resistant bacteria.

So much for GRAS... is the FDA turning over a new more pro-caution leaf or is this because someone didn't grease the right palms?

Perhaps Monsanto could give them some pointers ;)

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#85

Post by greglindahl »

Kenji wrote: post #63
ryen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof should be on the manufacturers to prove, scientifically, that it's safe and effective. Not the FDA

What? That is an incredibly strange notion. So by default, everything should be banned, and it should only be legal if you can show it's safe? That is not how it works. A ban is an authoritarian action that has to be enforced at gunpoint, always keep that in mind. It is not only a very extreme stance to take, it is a violent one. A ban should only apply on things that are shown to be bad and harmful.

The reason that we've had so many people hurt by nutritional supplements is that they're allowed to add anything until it's proven to be unsafe. In the medical field, which has strict rules today, it was the era of dangerous and ineffective "patent medicine" that caused our existing policies to be created.

If you're going to advocate change, don't you think it's important to understand historical and modern examples of the people you're going to kill?

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#86

Post by nommm-nommm »

mkane848 wrote: post #3

Is there any reason why these companies would include a seemingly ineffective element into their product other than being able to say "antibacterial" on the label? It couldn't possibly have been CHEAPER to add them to soaps when it became the new meta, so it'd be interesting if marketing was the sole reason for it.

I have a friend that won't use non antibacterial soap. Marketing is very powerful. It sounds good and that's enough for most people.

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#87

Post by exclusiv »

cylinder wrote: post #47
koolba wrote: post #26

What about hand sanitizers? Should we not be using those as well or is limited usage ( say keeping a bottle in the car for use before you scarf down a McDouble ) ok?

Hand sanitizers aren't anti-bacterial

Alcohol kills bacteria.

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#88

Post by balabaster »

koolba wrote: post #26

What about hand sanitizers? Should we not be using those as well or is limited usage ( say keeping a bottle in the car for use before you scarf down a McDouble ) ok?

The McDouble will probably kill you faster than the hand sanitizer ;)

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#89

Post by wonder_er »

djschnei wrote: post #33

I guess I'm weird; I have no idea why the government has the ability to dictate what is and isn't in the soap that I choose to buy. I agree however, anti-bacterial soap is silly. Looks like a lot of people here agree. Looks like a market segment to me. Didn't need a gun, theft, or a jail cell to create it.

You're correct. Most regulation is a lagging indicator of where the market is already going. If they tried to regulate something in a way that no one wanted to follow, no one would follow it, and they'd be ignored.

So, when a portion of the population starts changing their mind on something, the FDA might determine that there's enough political will for a new regulation, and if they move quick, they can be seen as a progressive and helpful industry.

The FDA causes incalculable harm in other ways, mostly by prohibiting good things from coming to market.

For example, factory farming is incredibly harmful, but local alternatives are mostly illegal, for not complying with FDA regulations (which only approve factory farms). [0]

Another example: An amazing, cheap, reversible male birth control option called Vaselgel has been functioning in India for decades, and a few organizations have tried to bring it to the USA, only to be unable to afford the FDA regulatory hurdle. Male birth control is an amazing option for so many different groups, and prohibiting it has real costs on society. It's slated for human trials in 2017. [1]

By working against these interests, the FDA causes far more harm than it prevents. This soap antibiotics ban is (to my cynical view) an easy win for the agency, in an attempt to build good-will or trust in the market.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Want-Do-Illegal-Stories/dp...

[1] https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/

Re: FDA Orders Antibacterials Removed from Consumer Soaps

#90

Post by nopinsight »

bko wrote: post #73
jcrites wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the first category is "ban something if it's ineffective and there's a tragedy of the commons from using it ". Antibacterial soaps are probably not any more effective than regular soaps, but they might contribute to bacterial immunity (to antibacterials).

Surely there is some negative effects to any recreational drug use, especially alcohol. Theres always a trade off , I just think that the bar to making something illegal should be higher.

There is likely negative externality to other people from its widespread use (more bacterial resistance), and the benefit is at most a placebo effect. Many users may not even care that much--it's just another optional checkbox at little extra cost.

The manufacturers also fall into a prisoner's dilemma and cannot avoid offering it if a number of buyers are not aware of or care about externalities. Only the government can pull them out together.

Should we allow smoking in most public places?

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