Contra Drum On The Fish Oil Story

Scott's rebuttal to Kevin Drum's charge that his Omegaven/FDA story was exaggerated. Concedes the details he got wrong (5-10 years not 20; 'loophole' was really an IND), then reframes the disagreement with a killer thought experiment: the 'False Data Administration,' a censorship board that makes every reporter wait 10 years + $100M before publishing. Everyone could praise individual FDA employees and follow their mandate admirably, the reporter could sincerely thank them -- and the system would still kill people via its very design. This cleanly separates 'individual employees do their jobs well' from 'the institution's mandate is the problem.' Backed by the Silenor/Sinequan doxepin example (same molecule, 25x price via FDA branding), the 'I want a world where...' litany, and a defense of the 'anti-FDA blogosphere' (people get angry when the FDA nearly kills them).

Quality 77 · Excellent. Strong (upper): a forceful, memorable argument whose 'False Data Administration' analogy is a genuinely clarifying, portable reframe of institutional (as opposed to individual) failure; near-Excellent, held just below as a rebuttal in an ongoing exchange.

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Notable: the False Data Administration framing -- separating mandate-level failure from employee-level competence -- is a fresh, sharp analogy.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Minor: part of a real FDA-reform argument, but the post itself is commentary without a traceable material change.