Can the Food and Drug Administration ensure that our pharmaceuticals are safely manufactured?

摘要

CONTEMPORARY AMERICANS HAVE LITTLE appreciation for the extent to which phar-maceuticals have changed the face of medicine in the past 75 years. Just think: before the advent of the "therapeutic revolution" that began with the development of penicillin in the 1930s, the physician's armamentarium of drug therapies was limited to aspirin, digoxin, and a handful of other effective treatments. Indeed, most commercial "medicines" of that era were so-called patent drugs, the active ingredient of which was alcohol-you didn't get well, but you felt better about it.