These sites are providing evidence that’s nearly as strong as randomized controlled trials, or the analogous type of experiment for non-clinical studies. And the fact that there are multiple such sites effectively competing with each other should improve the info they provide overall.

There’s almost certainly alternative means of financing and administering rational investigation of nearly any topic, other than FDA-style models. Just look at the kosher-food ‘regulatory agencies’ – it’s definitely different, but not obviously worse.

You are right, at least about the ‘controlled studies’ part, but for what it’s worth, I’ll leave this here: http://www.erowid.org fits your description to some extent.

Interesting that I read that comment differently. I thought he meant that the FDA could accept applications from expert organizations to review drugs and license the FDA’s trademark of approval to the approved organizations. Your reading makes more sense of the actual comment, though.

Max L.

Consider automobiles.

If you want to know which car has the best style and handling, you can pick up a lot of good information from car and driver, the truth about cars, or various online forums.

If you want those cars – indeed all cars on the market – to reliably save your life and be able to take head-on collisions at high velocity, then the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is a better bet. One needs the right mix of both.

Always remember that while one key function of the FDA is to make it safer for you to take meds, another key function is to make safer for *me* when *you* take meds. Reviewers of a pain med might not care or report that it makes them unfit to drive or prone to outbursts of homicidal behavoir – but the rest of us do.