Final answer:
One of the FDA's main roles is to regulate drug safety, ensuring medications are safe before they reach the market. While this protects patients from unsafe drugs, it can delay access to new treatments for patients in need and adds to drug development costs.
Step-by-step explanation:
The FDA, or Food and Drug Administration, has many roles, but one of its main roles is to regulate drug safety. This responsibility includes ensuring that medicines sold in pharmacies are safe and effective, which often means that a company must undergo extensive testing and trials before a drug can be approved for market release.
While the winners in this system are clearly patients who are protected from potential harm from unsafe drugs, the downside, or "losers," in this context can be the patients with urgent needs for new therapies who may suffer due to the time it takes for a drug to be approved under these strict medical regulations. These regulations can sometimes delay the availability of potentially life-saving treatments. Moreover, the extensive testing required can add considerable cost to the drug development process, which can present financial barriers to smaller pharmaceutical firms.
Last but not least, the FDA is crucial in the Nation's counterterrorism capability by securing the food supply and promoting the development of medical products to respond to health threats. The FDA collaborates with various federal and state agencies as well as overseeing the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry, including both prescription and over-the-counter medications.