QUOTE(One @ Mon 13th July 2009, 5:47pm)
There are two problems with "consensus" on Wikipedia. The first is that a small number of individuals can derail any discussion for any reason. The second is the super-majorities required to pass anything. We can do nothing about the second problem, but I think a committee could get a productive agenda-driven dialog going.
Only to be squashed later, when it comes time to implement. Lucy holding the football for Charley Brown again.
Once at a conference I heard this dude from DARPA come up with this idea that development of drugs for space-use (antiradiation, antiweightless bone loss stuff) could be fast-tracked in the DARPA way. DARPA is the ultimate think-tank, inasmuch as they only pay consultants for two years, then send them back to whereever they came from, so there's always turnover and no entrenchment. And they can get very creative results in rapid time, when no biology is involved (see their robot car challenges). Anyway this guy said it "ought to be possible" for DARPA to get drugs "through the FDA" in a small fraction of the time. (IMG:
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Now, I knew the story of the FDA vs. the U.S. Military. The FDA made them throw away a million units of frozen stockpiled blood, because this method of preservation had never been approved by them. The FDA is even tougher than Iraq and Afghanistan, because your weapons are useless. The fighting is all done on paper, according to FDA rules. It doesn't matter who you are. Your best bet is to bribe them, and the military has a hard time with that, when it's agency of their own government.
So, I asked Mr. Astronaut Major DARPA Weenie if he'd ever actually
gotten the FDA to fast track a drug, yet. One example. He admitted they hadn't yet, but they were planning to. I told him not to wear a spacesuit while waiting, or he'd need many a diaper.
That was years ago. DARPA never did get any drugs though the FDA. (IMG:
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This has something to do with what you're trying to do there on Wikipedia, but I've forgotten what.