Willing Fantasy Needs No Agency Wrinkles

While straining with biomedical problems of literally life-and-death consequences, the Food and Drug Administration is also firing away at a benign fantasy, namely, that modern science can at last counter the fearsome aging processes that produce facial wrinkles. Prove it or deflate your advertising, the FDA recently warned half a dozen major manufacturers of skin creams and lotions for which wondrous qualities have been advertised.

Science can actually do little or nothing about the ravages of time, as evidenced by the inexorable march of crow’s feet and creases, even in dermatologically free-spending high society, plus prosperity in the face-lift trade. But even so, there’s reason to wonder why the hard-pressed FDA is challenging pseudo-scientific fairy tales that arouse such lovely hopes and inflict no harm. Unlike the deficit, the bomb, reignited inflation and doctors’ bills for the uninsured, wrinkles do not make the top 10 list in the pollsters’ inventory of contemporary concerns. But, viewed against the cosmetic abundance that fills the world’s drug stores and supermarkets, wrinkles obviously rank high on the index of silent human anxiety.

Customers for anti-wrinkling compounds pay extravagant sums for the products that have drawn the FDA’s ire. But the customers pay willingly, even enthusiastically, and apparently without complaint. The firms cannot be accused of exploiting the medically needy, since their products, unlike antibiotics and other life-saving drugs, are necessities only in a very selfish and optional sense. Furthermore, there’s no danger that these enticingly described potions are diverting wrinkle sufferers from truly effective treatments. If any medicinal could really defeat wrinkles, could it possibly remain top secret?

In terms of legalistics, the FDA has a right to challenge the manufacturers’ brazen claims. But the real question is, why bother? No one can say that the customers--all volunteers--are harmed or fleeced. After all, they keep coming back for more, even as nature takes its facial toll. The products in question have not aroused concerns about safety. Pricing is none of the FDA’s business. Nor is fantasy, which is the principal ingredient of the cosmetics industry.