A 1996 conference hosted by the Food and Drug Administration on the "FDA and the Internet" dealt with the Internet's challenge to that agency's monopoly on dissemination of medical information. Current law makes it a crime for drug manufacturers to make non-approved statements concerning a drug's usefulness, including aspirin's well-known potential to prevent heart disease. It is even illegal for the manufacturer of a product that the FDA has approved to advertise that its product is FDA approved.

The conference dealt explicitly with the FDA's need to extend regulatory authority over web links and chat rooms. (The Internet's global nature also explained the involvement of numerous concerned representatives from foreign countries outside the FDA's jurisdiction.) The FDA also considered classifying "expert systems" computer software—which help doctors correlate reports of diverse symptoms and effectively replace shelves of medical books—as medical devices subject to the agency's censorship.

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