The FDA and Nanotechnology
One of the topics that the FDA will need to deal with is the whole topic of nanotechnology. It has been a hot topic recently due to an public meeting on this topic recently (Oct. 10, 2006).
United Press International - Health Business - Analysis: FDA comes up short on nanotech:
The above UPI report was released before the FDA meeting mentioned above. This paragraph caught my attention.
Taylor noted that the FDA’s budget would have to be increased by 50 percent to bring it up to its 1996 level. And the agency’s budget for next year won’t improve without action by Congress. President Bush’s 2007 proposed budget will increase the gap between responsibilities and capacity to 56 percent.
Given how important the FDA is (they oversee 25% of the gross national product) and how much work they have to do an increasing budget gap is cause for alarm. Especially in light of the recent rash of problems with spinach and lettuce which seems to indicate that there may not be enough oversight in this area. Add to this trying to keep up with the rapid advances in many areas particularly nanotechnology and you have a recipe for disaster.
There are at least 320 products using nanotechnology already on the market although many of these fall outside the purview of the FDA and about 200 products that would fall under the FDA’s rules are under development.
This is another example of science leading public policy when it comes to cutting edge technologies. I have some experience in this regard when I worked for a company developing polymer based drugs and educating the FDA on how the polymers were characterized. We had to educate some FDA folks as to what the analytical methods were we were using and how the technology worked and why we were using as well as other methods we tried that may not have worked and why they didn’t work.
FDA told to watch nanotech products for risks - Yahoo! News
The above story focuses on the fact that the FDA is ill equipped to deal with nantech products and the possible safety questions. The FDA has created an internal task force to look into nanotech and should have a report out in about nine months (mid-summer 2007). While I applaud them doing this, it seems to be quite late to the party. Nanotechnology has been popular for some time now and many products have been developed based on it. As quick search of Google news archive on nanotechnology shows articles back to March 1991.
A quick search for nanotechnology in Google trends shows searches for it being fairly flat but the really interesting fact to note is that the US does not even appear in the top 10 cities searching for this term. india occupies 6 of the top ten cities
Looking at the trends by country is even more revealing.
Another interesting tidbit is that Iran is number two for searching for the term nanotechnology. The US is down at the number 8 position. I’m not sure what to make of this but it is interesting.
Some other news stories:
• FDA gets mixed advice on nanotechnology
• Experts give FDA advice for regulating nanotechnology
• Nanotechnology: It’s Knocking on FDA’s Door
Other Resources
• FDA web page on Nanotechnology
• FDA nanotechnology - Yahoo! Search Results
• FDA nanotechnology - Google Search
• Yahoo! News Search Results for fda nanotechnology
• FDA nanotechnology - Google News
Technorati Tags: FDA, Google Trends, nanotechnology
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