If you didn't have the FDA...

...these would still be sold/over-prescribed/prescribed in unwarranted dangerous situations...

Mortality and morbidity in patients receiving encainide, flecainide, or placebo. The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial.

Echt DS, Liebson PR, Mitchell LB, Peters RW, Obias-Manno D, Barker AH, Arensberg D, Baker A, Friedman L, Greene HL, et al.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS. In the Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial, designed to test the hypothesis that suppression of ventricular ectopy after a myocardial infarction reduces the incidence of sudden death, patients in whom ventricular ectopy could be suppressed with encainide, flecainide, or moricizine were randomly assigned to receive either active drug or placebo. The use of encainide and flecainide was discontinued because of excess mortality. We examined the mortality and morbidity after randomization to encainide or flecainide or their respective placebo. RESULTS. Of 1498 patients, 857 were assigned to receive encainide or its placebo (432 to active drug and 425 to placebo) and 641 were assigned to receive flecainide or its placebo (323 to active drug and 318 to placebo). After a mean follow-up of 10 months, 89 patients had died: 59 of arrhythmia (43 receiving drug vs. 16 receiving placebo; P = 0.0004), 22 of nonarrhythmic cardiac causes (17 receiving drug vs. 5 receiving placebo; P = 0.01), and 8 of noncardiac causes (3 receiving drug vs. 5 receiving placebo). Almost all cardiac deaths not due to arrhythmia were attributed to acute myocardial infarction with shock (11 patients receiving drug and 3 receiving placebo) or to chronic congestive heart failure (4 receiving drug and 2 receiving placebo). There were no differences between the patients receiving active drug and those receiving placebo in the incidence of nonlethal disqualifying ventricular tachycardia, proarrhythmia, syncope, need for a permanent pacemaker, congestive heart failure, recurrent myocardial infarction, angina, or need for coronary-artery bypass grafting or angioplasty.

CONCLUSIONS. There was an excess of deaths due to arrhythmia and deaths due to shock after acute recurrent myocardial infarction in patients treated with encainide or flecainide. Nonlethal events, however, were equally distributed between the active-drug and placebo groups. The mechanisms underlying the excess mortality during treatment with encainide or flecainide remain unknown.

Because a drug company, knowing that it has a defective product, will not take it off the market unless forced. Like Vioxx and thousands of other dangerous drugs and devices.

But, because "big pharma" is regulated and its products constantly scrutinized... Dangerous drugs that get through the process do get recalled or heavily limited in their application.

My thing is... What about all that "homeopathy" and "alternative" medicine?

Homeopathy is "safe" as it's so diluted that it's, statistically, probably just water. So, except for the gullible fools being helped by the placebo effect, it's harmless in its application. And, anyone dumb enough to go off "traditional" medicine in a desperate attempt to get cured by some idiotic homeopathic "medicine"... Well, I'm sure it's going to improve the gene pool in the long run, so it's hard to be too upset...

But other forms of alternative medicine can be down-right dangerous, like this...:

A Missouri woman has filed an unusual case of malpractice against a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), alleging Zhengang Guo fell below the standard of care by prescribing Chinese herbs that caused her to suffer kidney failure.

Delores Drury's case challenges the notion that Chinese herbs are free of the harmful side effects often associated with prescription drugs. After being treated for a variety of ailments by Patrick Kennedy, a St. Louis-area chiropractor who ordered herbs from Guo, she allegedly developed a kidney condition known as “Chinese herb nephropathy” (CHN).

“Defendants knew, or by using ordinary care, should have known that said Chinese herbs caused unreasonably dangerous risks and serious side effects of which the general public would not be aware,” Drury alleges in a complaint filed Dec. 31 in Cook County (Ill.) Circuit Court.

Guo is a seventh-generation Chinese medicine doctor and the founder of Life Rising, which operates clinics in Chicago. According to Drury, the herbs he prescribed for her contained aristolochic acid, a naturally occuring toxin which some researchers have linked to CHN.

“Plaintiff's Chinese herb nephropathy, kidney disease, and renal failure occurred as a result of her ingestion of the Chinese herbs” prescribed by Guo, the suit says.

People think this is medicine. But it's not. And seven generations? Holy crap! At 20-years a generation, this "medicine" has been causing kidney failure for 140 years!

And there are other "natural medicines/supplements" that are dangerous as hell. Oyster shells and bone meal "calcium" supplements contain lead, cadmium and mercury. Lots of the "fish oil" supplements contain high levels of mercury, and you can't tell which ones do without testing. Shark cartilage, used in alternative (and Chinese) medicine, frequently contains unsafe levels of mercury.

Many medicinal herbs are toxic to the liver: borage, comfrey, germander and coltsfoot. Others are toxic to other organs.

Mistletoe was, for a long time, a big up-and-comer in "cancer treatments." Problem is that mistletoe, like laetrile, is toxic AND it was never actually studied. Now that it's been studied, it's been found to make cancers worse, not better. Yet Vidarkliniken still runs a cancer treatment center (it's a pretty thing) that apparently doesn't do a damn thing but kill it's patients faster...

And, of course, if you speak out about this dangerous quackery... The poor "victims" of your "big pharma" brainwashing-conspiracy are compared to poor Galileo. Ironically, they are wrong and Galileo was right. Galileo had the HARD DATA showing he was right.

The quacks have nothing... Which makes a comparison to Galileo rather... Stupid... You can only be Galileo if you are right.