The FDA is supposed to approve new drugs and procedures if the expected benefits outweigh the expected costs. If they actually did this, the number of people saved by new drugs would be roughly equal to the number killed by them
Actually, if the FDA really did this the marginal—in this case, most-dangerous—drug approved should kill as many people as it save. But since every drug before that would save more people as it killed, on net there should be more people saved than killed.
Right—I just logged in to try to fix this, after realizing that if what I originally wrote were true, drugs would have net zero benefit.
(An additional complication is that approval of a good drug gives continued benefits indefinitely, while approval of a bad drug does not give continued costs—its badness is found out and it is taken off the market.)
A lot of this good drug stuff seems to be drugs that are taking a long time to pass, but eventually will. These can be compared simply with the bad drugs.
Also, this is technically not correct:
Actually, if the FDA really did this the marginal—in this case, most-dangerous—drug approved should kill as many people as it save. But since every drug before that would save more people as it killed, on net there should be more people saved than killed.
Right—I just logged in to try to fix this, after realizing that if what I originally wrote were true, drugs would have net zero benefit.
(An additional complication is that approval of a good drug gives continued benefits indefinitely, while approval of a bad drug does not give continued costs—its badness is found out and it is taken off the market.)
A lot of this good drug stuff seems to be drugs that are taking a long time to pass, but eventually will. These can be compared simply with the bad drugs.
Yay for marginal cost does not equal average cost!