Sponge bath - phase out of Today Sponge contraceptive

Reason, June, 1995 by Michael Fumento

As a result, says Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., the FDA causes thousands of premature deaths a year. It does so by delaying approval of drugs and devices already available in the rest of the civilized world and much of the not-so-civilized world.

For all its concerns, the FDA iS no guarantee of safety, even within the field of contraceptives. For instance, the FDA tested and approved the Dalkon Shield, an intrauterine birth-control device that killed 18 women and injured thousands more before being pulled off the market in 1975. Similarly, the tampons responsible for toxic-shock syndrome met all FDA regulations.

The FDA's stock reply to such examples is that but for them, there would be even more such deaths. But that's an inherently unbalanced equation. After all, a product that is forbidden to be sold cannot possibly cause harm. If delayed several years, it cannot cause harm in those years. But neither can it help--and the lives lost because of held-up drugs and devices need to be factored into any serious cost-benefit analysis.

The Today Sponge incident adds another factor to this already deadly equation: It turns out that the full impact of the FDA's regulatory myopia is not just revealed in preventable deaths, but perhaps in preventable births, as well.

Michael Fumento is an associate of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of Science Under Siege: Balancing Technology and The Environment.