The FDA harms patients in two ways:
1. It withholds good treatments from patient for many years after private physician-scientists and would be able to figure out that they work. Drug lag is the delay of all new drugs as they go through the FDA approval process; drug loss is a much worse phonomenon that happens when would-be drugmakers decide not to pursue commercialization at all due to the risk and expense of the approval process. Drug lag and drug loss cost at least hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives every year.
2. It sanctions drugs as "safe" after overlooking serious harms. Many doctors and patients have absolute faith in the government to protect them and will prescribe or take anything liberally once the government approves it. But many approved drugs had been found to have serious adverse effects years after approval. A good historical example is Thalidomide, which caused birth defects in thousands of infants after European regulators assured everyone it was safe. If Europeans had been more conscientious and less willing to let the authorities do their thinking for them, the thalidomide episode might have been avoided.
The bottom line is that the FDA greatly harms our health and should be abolished. The government cannot protect us--we can only protect ourselves.