Should the Government Stay Out of Drug Development? Read the Opinions of Nurses and Certified Legal Nurse Consultants

The government recently announced that it would fund a billion-dollar government-run drug development center to help create new drugs. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences will be tasked with creating new drugs and, according to the Director of the NIH, “any project that reaches the point of commercial appeal would be moved out of the academic support line and into the private sector.”

I already have strong feelings about the government’s involvement in the private sector and business. I have even stronger feelings about the government spending enormous amounts of taxpayer money to get into the pharmaceutical business.

We also need to ask who will be responsible and liable for the defective or dangerous drugs that will reach the market. Who will pay for the lives damaged by the unforeseen side-effects of these government-created drugs? The federal government will certainly cloak themselves with immunity. The private sector distributors or marketers will certainly negotiate their own liability to a minimum. Does this mean that all government drugs will carry a disclaimer of liability? Has anyone asked, much less answered, these questions?

I asked my nursing and Certified Legal Nurse Consultants friends on Facebook what they thought of the announcement. Here are some of their responses:

“I work in government – it seems to me if the concern is the slow pace, putting it in the hands of bureaucrats will not help.”

“The Government has absolutely no business in the private sector. Big problem currently. I would encourage everyone to go back and read the documents of our Founding Fathers and then ask yourselves these two questions. How in the world did Americans survive and thrive for the first 150 years or so? Why are Americans becoming more unhealthy and dying at younger ages? I don’t believe the increasing health issues are related to a lack of drugs that’s for sure.”

“This stinks. How many more chemicals are we going to throw into people’s bodies? How many more heart attacks, strokes, paralysis, etc are we going to cause by using invented medicines? Maybe doing research on alternative supplements would be the better suggestion. There may be more money in prevention…wow prevention.”

“If God meant us to eat from a carton or heal ourselves from a bottle, he would have hung those items on the trees or stacked them on the forest/ocean floors for us to find!”

“My first thought is that soon we will ALL be working for the government regardless of what field we are in! From my understanding, the FDA takes a long time to approve the use of any new drugs, much longer than many other countries. I wonder if this process will speed up when the government is making the new drugs?”

“I look at it this way! Where is the government when it comes to regulating cost of insurance? Well we’ve all seen what that has cost the nursing field… more patient to nursing ratio without regards to what it cost as far as quality nursing care. I feel that it will be a great injustice to the welfare of future nurse patient care. Lord Please help us all if this comes to pass.”

“No! Government is too involved in health care as it is.”

“Government has all it can handle dealing with government. They don’t need to be involved in developing drugs, banking or any other business.”

“This can best be done in the private sector. If the government would have stayed out of healthcare to start, new drug research would continue apace. Show me anything the government has done in a cost-effective efficient manner! It doesn’t happen. And where is the constitutional authority for federal government drug development?”

“I think the government has more than enough on their plate as it is without trying to branch out into places it knows just about nothing about!”

“If the government delves into research and development, who will provide oversight?”

“Although I don’t believe that the government needs to “control” our health care, I do believe that in this day and age and in this great country everyone deserves access to quality health care! The drug and insurance companies are running-or should I say ruining our country.”

“Fiscally, there is always the catch that government is spending someone else’s money for someone else’s benefit – Never a fiscally sound arrangement!”

“We have become so dependent on pharmaceuticals in this country! We want tiny little pills to fix everything – including poor decision making! Now please excuse me while I go pour another cup of coffee and snack on some potato chips!”

“The federal government should keep their hands off of drug research. The federal government shouldn’t waste their energies but rather concentrate on economic problems pertaining to healthcare like the jobless RN professionals who settle for a meager income. Think of a decent program for the new RN grads.”

“I am an RN who has thirty years of pharmaceutical clinical research experience and this is the scariest thing that I have heard yet. People may balk about the 10 years and one billion dollars in research money that it takes to develop a drug but this is how we ensure that patients are safe and our drugs are safe. Hasn’t the government gotten in the way of enough? Who makes them experts on research? Where are the statisticians, chemists, preclinical people and clinical people to develop these compounds? Scary as all heck.”

As you can see, not a single nurse thinks this is a good decision. Here’s another interesting question: Why are nurses left out of these important decisions?

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share what you think about the government getting into the drug-making business.