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There's a certain libertarian right-wing view that there should be no FDA, that people can decide for themselves whether medicines are safe and effective. That's nonsense. Most people don't have the expertise or the resources to mount a proper study to find out whether a treatment is safe or effective.

The FDA serves a real purpose: To protect public health.

Some of the FDA's own scientists have charged that politics, not science, is behind the FDA's actions.

You can't treat an illness with cosmetic surgery, and that's why it would be great if there were qualified therapists in plastic surgeons' offices, and that people would go to a therapeutic meeting before plastic surgery. I think that should be part of the FDA requirement.

And while we are on the subject of medication you always need to look at risk versus benefit.

We should be concerned not only about the health of individual patients, but also the health of our entire society.

Whatever concerns health is of real public interest.

I am convinced that in order for you, as a patient, to be protected, it has to be transparent, evidence-based, objective information. Not self-serving information. Not pharma-driven information. Not ad-driven information. It is transparent, objective, evidence-based information.

Now is not the time to give greater protections to pharmaceutical companies that put unsafe drugs like Vioxx on the market. Such protections have nothing to do with the liability insurance crisis facing doctors and should be stripped from this bill.

The public properly relies upon FDA classification of drugs as nonprescription as a reflection of the agency's judgment regarding the safety and proper use of a drug without a doctor's prescription.