FDA should not revive discredited vaccine approval system
From start to finish, it took Pfizer, Moderna, and others less than a year to get their COVID-19 vaccines approved for use. Before Operation Warp Speed, it typically took eight to 17 years to bring a vaccine to market.
Writing in the Washington Examiner, Dean Clancy, senior health policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity, says we should not go back to the old way.
No corners were cut in the development of Covid vaccines, only red tape.
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) March 17, 2021
“No corners were cut in the development of Covid vaccines, only red tape,” former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden noted. Why would we return to a system that cost countless people their lives?
Regulators are now saying they plan to return to the old, slow process of approval for Moderna’s planned vaccine that targets both seasonal flu and COVID-19. Others are pushing price controls that are sure to result in fewer life-saving drugs reaching the market.
Senior Health Policy Fellow Dean Clancy
“The pandemic has demonstrated that incentivizing innovation and scientific discovery was responsible for the successes we saw and from which the public benefited in our response to the coronavirus,” Clancy writes.
During the pandemic, we saw time and again how onerous government regulations slowed our response and made combating the virus more difficult.
The FDA approval process for COVID-19 testing kits allowed only the CDC to produce a test, sidelining thousands of labs that could have produced millions of tests.
Whether it’s tests or vaccines, we’ve found a better way. We should not return to discredited methods.
“When lives are on the line, waiting more than a decade for a vaccine is simply not acceptable,” Clancy concludes.
Read the whole thing here.
