Hey rodman - I agree with you on AMA seeing drugs as band aids, I also strongly sense physicians are exhausted at being played as scapegoats by both patients and their families and politicians, while, at the same time, being manipulated by insurers, hospitals and especially big pharma and it's overpowering commercial and political influences. On your view on the politicians driving the FDA; on a number of policy issues and money issues, I would agree. Not so sure the trend away from drugs to devices is influenced one way or the other, if at all, by DC and certainly not the applications, approvals and grunt work going on at the FDA. Until very recently, this issue has been too small, with almost no light shining on it.
Compared to big pharma, the device players, both in the marketplace and internally at the FDA are dwarfed by the world of Rx and OTC branded and generic drugs. That's why it's going to be exciting when this explodes and people wonder what just happened - ergo, paradigm shift, a disruptive technology, in it's truest form, notwithstanding it's been around for a long time. The time of these devices has come only because the technology exists, we are drugging ourselves to death and self- destruction and we are slowly waking up to the facts. 80% of the painkillers consumed in the world combined with the dollars involved and the pharma lobby? We've done it to ourselves.
The political take is partially what I meant in my references to top elected, not appointed, leadership in DC taking, or manufacturing, a ton of self-praise about, what the FDA actually wrote in its Proposed Order describing, "on it's own initiative", and new information, driving it " on it's own" to create the new Class II designation, following it's substantially increasing the horsepower in its devices section of CDRH. You watch, this will become a game of bob and weave, with everyone taking credit for " this significant breakthrough in the long-term vision of POTUS and the most senior elected Dems, or GOP, whatever". To be fair, there are hundreds of federal, state and local politicians and caring doctors and hospital folks who have been screaming for change for years. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg saw it all during her time in NYC.
I say this amazing shift away from harmful chemical drugs and the outrageous consumer/patient abuse and over-prescribing factors in America is being driven mostly by device manufacturers, FDA leadership and the American people and doctors waking up, and virtually nothing to do with senior elected DC players and POTUS. If POTUS and senior players were able to detach from all the crises hounding them and manipulating their schedules and focus hard on this crisis for just one hour, it would happen today, at full speed ahead.
I don't know the numbers, but it would be interesting to know the true and total costs of drug damage at home, never mind the number of deaths and humanistic devastation, compared to the true and total costs of all the battles we wage and the trillions of dollars we give away elsewhere in the world. I'm getting tired of carrying the world on our shoulders and helping to solve so many external problems, we need to fix things at home. yankee, do you have a handle on those kinds of statistics?
