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Regulatory Capture in Science

The agencies created to protect you are funded by the companies they're supposed to regulate. This is not a conspiracy. It's the budget.

Regulatory capture happens when an oversight body gradually starts serving the interests of the industry it monitors rather than the public. In science and medicine, this is structural. The FDA receives a significant portion of its drug-review budget from pharmaceutical company fees. The EMA operates similarly. Staffers routinely move between regulatory agencies and industry positions — the so-called revolving door. Over time, the regulator and the regulated develop shared assumptions, shared language, and shared interests.

The consequences are concrete. Drugs get approved based on industry-funded trials that regulators lack the resources to independently verify. Safety reviews rely on data the manufacturer controls. Post-approval monitoring is underfunded. When problems surface, the agency that approved the drug has an institutional interest in defending that decision rather than reversing it.

This doesn't mean every approval is wrong or every regulator is corrupt. It means the system has a built-in tilt. The people making safety decisions about the products you consume are financially dependent on the companies making those products. You don't need bad actors for this to produce bad outcomes. You just need a structure where the incentives point the wrong way.

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