4 pointsby delichon3 hours ago1 comment
  • mikgp2 hours ago
    The point on Radithor seemed suss to me:

    “Introduced in 1918, Radithor was William J. A. Bailey's biggest commercial success, selling 400,000 bottles between 1925 and 1930. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warnings against the use of Radithor but did not have the authority to ban it during this period.”

    Many of these examples seem less like settled science and more like a set of fads. But it also seems to leave out all of the fringe things people tried and didn’t work.

    While I’m not completely obtuse I don’t actually understand the point this person is trying to make other than knowledge is hard and political.

    “1930s: a chemist dissolves a new sulfa drug in diethylene glycol, which is antifreeze. It kills 107 people, mostly children, and only then does America give the FDA power to demand safety testing.”

    Is this a pro-institutional screed or an anti-institutional one?

    I feel like what’s weird is people don’t really have a solution here. We’re simultaneously criticizing cutting edge science while simultaneously trying to lower the bar around getting things like “peptides” to market.