The thing that worries me most about the FDA's precautionary approach isn't the Covid vaccines. It's all the other things we could probably be doing with mRNA, CRISPR, and other technologies that undoubtedly face years, or decades, of delay or may never happen. 1/

Need to keep in mind that FDA has been pulling out all the stops for Covid. So a vaccine that was developed in literally 2 days still hasn't formally been approved more than a year later. 2/

What about all of those other diseases that kill or affect tens of millions of people per year? Not urged along by crisis, how many insurmountable burdens of proof does the FDA throw at them? Especially in the case of new technologies the FDA isn't comfortable with? 3/

And how much investment does this deter? Shifting research from breakthroughs and moonshots to incrementalism, treatments instead of cures? 4/

We really need an OMB/OIRA-style watchdog that assess how the government approaches risk.

Heck, given the government's fondness for regulating infrastructure, things like trains, planes, and automobiles, we could even call it the Federal Trolley Agency. 5/5