The FDA and ECT

The FDA and ECT.

The FDA should test the safety of ECT machines ∗

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and the machines that deliver it have never been tested for safety and efficacy in order to receive approval from the FDA. The American Psychiatric Association and ECT advocates protested when the FDA took steps to classify the machines as posing “an unreasonable risk of illness or injury”, which would have required their testing before approval. Without requirin...

23andMe and the FDA.

n engl j med 370;11 nejm.org march 13, 2014 985 of things about your health,” including that you “might have an increased risk of heart disease, arthritis, gallstones, [or] hemochromatosis” (www.ispot.tv/ad/7qoF/ 23-and-me). It was the centerpiece of the company’s campaign to sign up 1 million consumers. On November 22, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent 23andMe a warning letter orderi...

The FDA and Cancer

Introduction C ancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease, and it is the leading cause of death among those 35 to 64 years of age. One of every four deaths is from cancer. The federal government has spent more than $46 billion on cancer research since President Nixon declared a War on Cancer and Congress passed the National Cancer Act in 1971...

The Type and E ect

The type and e ect discipline is a new framework for reconstructing the principal type and the minimal e ect of expressions in implicitly typed polymorphic functional languages that support imperative constructs. The type and e ect discipline outperforms other polymorphic type systems. Just as types abstract collections of concrete values, e ects denote imperative operations on regions. Regions...