On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:16:11 -0500, gothika put
finger to keyboard and composed:

No law suit is frivilous when one's health is involved.
The problems with the current system ingards to both the health
aspect(FDA) and legal issues is that our government has been bought
and paid for with corporate monies.(lobbying)
an accurate analogy would be one of the fox guarding the hen house.
Also as you state, the FDA has at best finite powers even when it
chooses to work for to the benefit of the people rather than corporate
entities.
As has been proven time and time again when new technologies and
medical knowledge emerge we gain more insight into what is and isn't
harmful to our health.

That cuts both ways. What if products, or procedures, that were once
thought harmful were proven not to be? John Edwards, John Kerry's
running mate, has made a preposterously rich living chasing
ambulances. According to the July 19, 2004 issue of Time, he, like
many greedy lawyers, charges a whopping 33% for each successful
litigation. That means that hundreds of millions of dollars goes into
the pockets of these parasites, and of course the public ultimately
foots the bill. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Edwards
won judgments totalling more than US$152m in 63 lawsuits.

In one case Edwards won damages in the amount of $4.2m for a child
born with brain damage and later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. This
case has contributed to an increase of 5% in the numbers of Caesarean
sections since 1970. Time goes on to say that "meanwhile, medical
research has been challenging the conventional wisdom that birth
trauma was the principal culprit in cerebral palsy."

"There seems to be no scientific question that most of that injury
(cerebral palsy) occurs prenatally and is not related to the
delivery", says Dr H. Davis Burton, whose partner was a defendant in a
lawsuit argued by Edwards and who later served as North Carolina's
secretary of health and human services.

That said I believe we have sufficient tools in the arsenal of the
medical science that when combined with the correct policy of erring
on the side of caution we can maintain some level of safety in
consumer products.
It will require a major overhauling of our current system of
government though.


- Franc Zabkar
--
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