With the recent media hype, we're all well aware of the myriad ways FDA has failed to provide safe food and drugs, but is there a way to patch up the ailing agency? Forbes.com has an interesting article that lists five ways to fix the agency. Their advice:

• FDA Fix 1: Pay Up How do we expect to police a $216 billion industry on $300 million per year?
• FDA Fix 2: Power Up The FDA Give the FDA powerful sticks and carrots to compel drug companies to test their medicines more thoroughly.
• FDA Fix 3: Track Side Effects In order to make sure that medicines are safe, we need to find new ways to track existing drugs.
• FDA Fix 4: Fund Drug Studies Right now, we depend entirely on companies to test the drugs they sell us. That's not smart medicine, and it's bad economics too.
• FDA Fix No. 5: Forget Labels Adding warnings to drugs has a limited effect. Does the FDA need its own ad agency?

From Forbes.com, Matthew Herper, "Five Ways to Fix FDA", Jan. 12, 2005