The modern history of drug regulation in the United States has been marked by the simultaneous pursuit of two goals—safety and efficacy. Since passage of the 1962 amendments to the Food and Drug Act, most members of the medical and regulatory establishment have regarded those two goals as complementary. By the early seventies, however, critics had begun to charge that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in its pursuit of these goals, was delaying or preventing the timely introduction of promising new drugs for seriously ill patients.
With the 1962 amendments, Congress gave the FDA authority to judge a drug's efficacy—whether it produced the results for which it had been developed. Formerly the agency had monitored only safety. Indeed, from 1938 until 1962, the FDA had just sixty days to disapprove the application of a new drug. If it did not, the drug could be marketed. The system worked without significant incident. But in 1962 the thalidomide tragedy hit the world.