Shall the FDA ban peanuts?
July 28th, 2008 | by Brian Schwartz |
Fox News, July 23:
The Seattle Mariners are declaring two sections of Safeco Field no-peanut zones for a couple of games this summer.
The AL club announced the move Wednesday to make the ballpark safer for children and grown-up fans with peanut allergies.
This could be a good business decision, but let’s hope the FDA does not get the wrong idea and, say, ban peanuts all together. What?! This recent article from the Library of Economics and Liberty suggests that by the FDA’s own logic, maybe they should ban peanuts:
tags: FDAThe FDA treats peanuts very differently than drugs like Vioxx, even though both have benefits but pose serious risks to some segment of the population. If peanuts were subjected to FDA approval, who would pay the bill to find out what we already know, namely that peanuts are nutritious for 99.5% of Americans and dangerous for 0.5%? The answer is that no one would pay. If peanuts were treated like drugs such as Vioxx, they would be kept off the market forever. Sorry, peanut butter and jelly lovers. …
Vioxx and all the COX-2 inhibitors were specifically designed to be safer than drugs like aspirin. Aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen, all of which are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), can cause gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding. Experts have estimated that in the United States, NSAID-induced GI complications result in 16,500 deaths and more than 100,000 hospitalizations per year. Vioxx and the other COX-2 inhibitors aren’t perfect, but neither are the NSAIDs they tried to replace.
