Ovaphobia

I like my eggs raw---as part of the mousse on my croissant. And I'd like to be certain that my chocolate-based diet would never give me salmonella. Is safety a good and desirable thing? Of course it is. Is more of a good thing better than less? If you answer "yes," you most likely believe that more safety is better than less safety, right? Duh! What then would be best? Elementary, my dear Watson: Getting as close to absolute safety as possible. Right? Wrong.

Is there a way for the FDA to prevent all salmonella outbreaks? Yes, and step one is to kill all the chickens. Is it possible for the FAA to make sure no one dies in plain crashes? Yes, but you have to make sure that no plane ever lifts off the ground. Can the EPA make sure that our air contains no industrial pollutants? Yes, we can! There's a very simple solution: No firm should ever be allowed to manufacture a single item. Shall we continue with the whole alphabetical soup of bureaucratic agencies?

Here is homework for those who enjoy quantitative gymnastics and want to find out whether any particular regulatory regime produces too much safety. Start with the FDA:

Is there a solution for the terrible trade-offs involved in the current system of FDA regulation? How about we keep the agency as a research facility without police powers? Rather than waiting for the FDA to approve every new substance for medicinal use, we may hire them (or their competitors) to test and release the experts' opinions on both the safety and the efficacy of drugs at a publicly accessible website at each stage of the process. If and when a substance is proven to do harm beyond a reasonable level, it will be removed from the market. While results are still inconclusive, it will be left at the discretion of the patients to take risks in consultation with their doctors.