Great Moments in Government Bureaucracy
Did the FDA's former ban on home testing kits result in thousands of avoidable infections?
CNN Money -- "A 24-year scandal was quietly acknowledged last week. On July 3 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first "rapid home" test for HIV—a test that people can take in the privacy of their own homes to determine whether they have the virus that causes AIDS.
The approval is an unambiguously good thing—or so you would think.
The saliva test in question, made by OraSure Technologies and known as
OraQuick, costs less than $60 and takes just 20 minutes to
self-administer. According to statistics an FDA advisory committee
presented at a hearing in May, it holds the potential to prevent the
transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of
use alone. That would be about 8 percent of the roughly 50,000 new
infections we currently see annually in the United States.
The scandal is that the approval of a rapid home test for HIV did not
occur until last week—about 24 years after the FDA received its first
application seeking permission to market one."
HT: Mike McKay
1 Comments:
This is the same FDA that forbids private testing of meat.
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