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FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

reuters.com

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Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#101

Post by JamisonM »

Invictus0 wrote: post #30
loudmax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely vote out the politicians responsible for for giving authority to these regulators. In fact, it's your duty to vote out crooked politicians. Even when both candidates for an office are crooked, they won't be equally crooked. Figure out which will do the least damage and support that candidate despite their flaws. And don't give up hope. Crooked interests are absolutely counting on voters' cynicism t…

It's not so simple as good and crooked. How can you even traceback which politician gave which authority to what regulator, and how can you possibly know that the opposing candidate would do a better job? Fringe issues like this are completely out of scope for voters and will not even show up on the politician's platform. If you care deeply about a fringe issue, you need to either hire a lobbyist or become a politici…

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that it is fairly obvious which political party in the United States takes regulatory issues seriously.

I think you might be greatly surprised by how much influence you personally can have on politics on a very practical level by interacting with politicians of said party in your district on a personal level.

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#102

Post by gwern »

lightedman wrote: post #97
refurb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably get down voted to hell, but this seems to be quite overblown. The FDA has posted their latest analysis of J&J talcum powder.[1] Of the 3 samples, 1 had "none detected" and 2 had 0.00002% or less by TEM (electron microscope). We're talking close to limit of detection. The bigger issue is the link to ovarian cancer. The data is all over the place. This one paper [1] sums up the data nicely - when looking…

"The FDA has posted their latest analysis of J&J talcum powder.[1] Of the 3 samples, 1 had "none detected" and 2 had 0.00002% or less by TEM (electron microscope). We're talking close to limit of detection." I do a bunch of mining and know the dangers of talc and its contaminants - it only takes ONE PARTICLE of tremolite or actinolite to start you on the road to mesothelioma. You just don't know which specific partic…

> it only takes ONE PARTICLE of tremolite or actinolite to start you on the road to mesothelioma.

A completely unhelpful thing to say. Everything starts somewhere, there's nothing special about asbestos. 'It only takes ONE GAMMA RAY PARTICLE to start you on the road to terminal brain cancer' too, but does that mean you shouldn't live in Denver or ever take an airplane flight?

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#103

Post by girvo »

dpau wrote: post #3
davidhyde wrote: post #2

So if you are a small cosmetics company the FDA will prevent you from selling your product without thorough testing but if you are a large cosmetic company you can simply tell the FDA that everything is OK. This benefits the larger companies and therefore, monopolies. Strikingly similar to how the FAA seems to operate with Boeing and look how that turned out.

J&J's actions are also very similar to those of the tobacco industry and oil companies- the dangers of their product were well-known within the industry and yet they took steps to obscure the issue and limit regulation rather than address the problem. (In fact I just did a Google search for "hazardous talc" and the first result is an ad: "Johnson & Johnson | Get the Facts About Talc‎" https://www.factsabouttalc.com )…

In a different corner of information: pulmonary talcosis is a known danger for intravenous drug users who shoot up pills. We’ve known about that for decades, too

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#104

Post by chiefalchemist »

davidhyde wrote: post #2

So if you are a small cosmetics company the FDA will prevent you from selling your product without thorough testing but if you are a large cosmetic company you can simply tell the FDA that everything is OK. This benefits the larger companies and therefore, monopolies. Strikingly similar to how the FAA seems to operate with Boeing and look how that turned out.

The list of untested yet still "approved" chemicals / additives is endless. The ability to pin point the guilt of causing a disease on any one of them is nearly impossible.

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#105

Post by refurb »

lightedman wrote: post #97
refurb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll probably get down voted to hell, but this seems to be quite overblown. The FDA has posted their latest analysis of J&J talcum powder.[1] Of the 3 samples, 1 had "none detected" and 2 had 0.00002% or less by TEM (electron microscope). We're talking close to limit of detection. The bigger issue is the link to ovarian cancer. The data is all over the place. This one paper [1] sums up the data nicely - when looking…

"The FDA has posted their latest analysis of J&J talcum powder.[1] Of the 3 samples, 1 had "none detected" and 2 had 0.00002% or less by TEM (electron microscope). We're talking close to limit of detection." I do a bunch of mining and know the dangers of talc and its contaminants - it only takes ONE PARTICLE of tremolite or actinolite to start you on the road to mesothelioma. You just don't know which specific partic…

OSHA says....

Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for asbestos is 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter of air as an eight-hour time-weighted average (TWA), with an excursion limit (EL) of 1.0 asbestos fibers per cubic centimeter over a 30-minute period. The employer must ensure that no one is exposed above these limits.

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#106

Post by saalweachter »

openasocket wrote: post #57
merpnderp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When these regulators stop "retiring" to cushy jobs in the industry, I'll believe it's the politicians and not the regulators openly taking bribes in the form of future "jobs". An easy fix would be for congress to pass a law preventing regulators from working in the industry they regulated, but then the politicians wouldn't also receive those same cushy "jobs".

While I agree with the sentiment, keep in mind it's a little more complicated than that. People who work on some category of regulations can only find relevant work in the government or in that sector of industry. Making it impossible to move from the government to an industry job effectively traps people for life in their one job unless they change careers. As a concrete example, my fiance is a lawyer working in env…

Hell, you can experience it first hand as a programmer. I could technically work on any programming job, from databases to JavaScript to game engines to machine learning, just like a lawyer could technically be any type of lawyer.

But it is way, way easier for me to get a job doing the exact same type of programming I've been doing for the last decade, in the same environment, and I get paid way, way more to do that, because my specific experience makes me so much more valuable.

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#108

Post by Consultant32452 »

JamisonM wrote: post #100
Consultant32452 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if absolutely nothing changed about the BBB except that I forced you to fund them against your will.

Why would you imagine that? All the work involved in capturing the FDA demonstrates that the FDA is not a "mandatory BBB", if they really had no teeth there would be no need to devote all these resources to dupe/intimidate/capture them.

Of course the FDA has teeth. But the teeth are only sharp enough to hurt the little fish. The big fish keep on swimming while the FDA takes out the little fish, just like the big fish like it. The FDA and the big fish are partners. Notice how nobody in this situation is partners with you and me.

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#109

Post by taneq »

nicoburns wrote: post #93
taneq wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you are a small cosmetics company the FDA will prevent you from selling your product without thorough testing but if you are a large cosmetic company you can simply tell the FDA that everything is OK. Possibly they're stricter on small companies because if they mess up, you can't fix the issue with a big class-action lawsuit? If Johnson & Johnson mess up, they're big enough to be able to compensate consumers…

Not everything is about money. And moral lapses don't (or shouldn't) disappear just because you pay for them with money. Regulation should protect people from everyone.

I totally agree. I was just trying to put myself in their place and come up with an interpretation of why they might, in good faith, behave this way.

Re: FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

#110

Post by [deleted] »

chmaynard wrote: post #80

Someday, scholars will write the long, sordid history of how industrial chemicals have been virtually unregulated for many decades. Thousands of novel compounds have been introduced into the environment in enormous quantities without any serious clinical studies of their long-term effects on human health and the health of the natural world.

[deleted]
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