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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Of course, the real situation is quite chaotic and a lot is based on a pile of ad-hoc decisions. FDA got lucky with Thalidomide - if you are very slow in approving everything, sooner or later some bad stuff will slip by faster regulators and it's time to uncork the champagne! - so they took it as the confirmation that not approving stuff is much better than approving stuff for many years after. But it's not based on some well-founded general scientific truth. And definitely doctors and what they think - at least if we're talking about rank and file doctors who actually talk to patients, not the ones that spend their days sitting in committees - have pretty little input into it and very little power in the process, as far as I know. It's not like "doctors were ruling it with their awesome knowledge and Trump came and started banning life-saving stuff because he's evil". It's "doctors did what FDA said to do before, and keep doing it under Trump, and will continue to do so long after Trump is forgotten".