[Ganchrow]

Originally Posted by By Sydney Spiesel @ Slate

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration reported that it had definitively established that marijuana has no medical use or value. Definitively? Established? I don't think so. ...

The announcement—actually, it's an "inter-agency advisory"—concludes by asserting, with a boldness that might belie a certain uneasiness, that it is the FDA's job to approve drugs. Take that, state legislatures and voters. ...

The FDA's statement implies that the agency reached its conclusion about marijuana after conducting a new serious analysis of the existing scientific literature on the drug. But of course no such analysis was reported in the medical literature and, in fact, no identifiable official at the FDA took responsibility for last week's advisory. It was just put out there as a statement of fact. ...

This is certainly not the first time that politics has trumped science at the FDA. Another recent example: the agency's decision to block over-the-counter availability for emergency contraceptives in the face of overwhelming evidence that the treatment is safe and effective, and support for over-the-counter availability by the FDA's own advisory committee. From my standpoint as a doctor, the question is this: What do you do when federal agencies become so politicized that their recommendations can't necessarily be trusted. ...

Read the rest here.

[Willie Bee]

This is certainly not the first time that politics has trumped science at the FDA.

Hell, it very likely wasn't even the first time last week that politics had the edge over science at the FDA. It would be a toss-up for me whether the IRS or the FDA was the first agency I got rid of.

[Dark Horse]

Whenever the FDA comes out with some statement like that, you can bet your ass that the stuff works.

Pharmaceutical industry is about repeat sales. If there was money in cures, every disease would have long been wiped out.