June 8, 2005 by s.z.

Dr. Stossel's Morphine for Tots As you will recall, last week John Stossel pointed out that the FDA is killing scads of people by insisting on testing the drugs which could save their lives (or could cause them to grow second heads).  He said that we could just let the free market regulate pharmaceuticals, but most people probably wouldn't go for that, so what the heck can do?  This week John tells us, in his Town Hall column What's the Alternative? Last week, I wrote about a federal agency that most people think is indispensable. In reality, I said, the FDA regulates us to death, literally, by forbidding even dying Americans who can't be helped by established medical treatments from trying innovative therapies.  But what's the alternative? Have no oversight? Let any company peddle every dubious medicine to an unsuspecting public? That sounds terrifying. Snake-oil sellers would sell all kinds of harmful stuff. That's why we created the FDA in the first place. But wait a second. Snake oil sellers sell it anyway. I've done consumer reports on snake-oil sellers for years. Crooks and deluded optimists sell useless baldness remedies, breast enlargers and diet products while the FDA is supposedly in charge. So, if Mark Eden is allowed to sell suction pump breast development plans without hindrance from the FDA, then what's the problem with letting Shady Al's Pharmaceutical Company 'n Crack House sell cancer treatments made from peach pits and cocaine?  (Oh, and since I haven't seen a Mark Eden ad for like 20 years, I suppose somebody must have shut them down.  Hey, maybe it was Stossel!) Without an FDA, how would doctors and patients know which drugs were safe and effective? The same way we know which computers and restaurants are good -- through newspapers, magazines and word of mouth. And if you read the local drug critic's review of Cancer-B-Gone, and it said that 500 people who took it died horribly, you might think twice about taking this drug.  (Too bad about those 500, though.)  But what if you missed that review? And what if the deaths occurred in Mexico, and the reviewer never heard about them?  Or what if Cancer-B-Gone paid the reviewer to cover up all the bad stuff about the product? Then tough for you. In the free market, you either trust in big business to align its priorities with yours, or you look out for yourself.  If you're worried, you could do your own drug testing -- maybe set up a lab in the basement.  Show some self-reliance, you big baby, and stop thinking that the government is supposed to look out for you!  ('Cause that's Bill O'Reilly's job.)  In a free, open society, competition gets the information out, and that protects consumers better than government command and control. Yes, remember how the word got out about how antiperspirants causes breast cancer, and about how mixing Pop Rocks and soda pop can blow your head off?  See, that's how an open, free society works. Why must we give big government so much power? Couldn't FDA scrutiny be voluntary and advisory? Companies that want government blessing would go through the whole process and, after 10 or 15 years, get the FDA's seal of approval. Those of us who are cautious would take only FDA-approved drugs. And those of us who are stupid would take Dr. Scholl's Tumor Remover ("Tumors disappear like magic, thanks to retsyn!") and AIDS-Lax ("The gentle, great-tasting way to cure AIDS while you sleep").  And then some of us would die -- but others of us would just get really, really sick, and the rest of us would end up paying (through increased medical costs, insurance premiums, or taxes) to care for these people.  Because, despite what Stossel thinks, our society still has a greater obligation to its members than simply telling them, "Caveat emptor, fool -- if you take something that causes you to have deformed children, or if your husband rubs something on his dick that makes it fall off, well, them's the breaks, and you're on your own now." If FDA scrutiny were voluntary, the government agency would soon have competition. Private groups like Consumer Reports and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) might step in to compete with the FDA. Well, why stop there?  What about the Good Housekeeping Institute -- I bet it knows a think or two about which are the best Mother's Little Helpers.  Oh, and the American Automobile Association does a good pretty job rating motels, so wouldn't YOU take a heart medication to which it had awarded four stars (or two stars, if you were on a budget)?  And if an antibiotic got good marks from Zagat, you'd feel confident about using it, wouldn't you? With such competition, the FDA might devise a ratings system ("general use," "medical guidance suggested," "patients strongly cautioned," or something like that), and drug packages would carry that information.  Yeah, a drug like Viagra would get the "general use" label, meaning that it would be fine for everybody (although it could kill those with high blood pressure -- and watch out for those 4-hour erections!).  Phen-Fen would be rated "medical guidance suggested," indicating that you should let a doctor help you decide if it's better to be thin or to ruin your heart.  "Patients strongly cautioned" would be for products like Bourdon's French Arsenic Complexion Wafers ("Ladies, if you desire a transparent, clear and fresh complexion, use Dr. Bourdon's French Arsenic Complexion Wafers"), since it will kill you if you use enough of it, but hey, it's a free country, so do whatever the hell you want. Under today's FDA rule, consumers assume big government takes care of the whole issue, so we become less vigilant. The consumer is encouraged to stay asleep: Don't ask questions; just take what Big Brother approves. Yet, knowing what we know about the incompetence of government monopolies, there's little doubt that competing private groups would do the testing better, cheaper and quicker. And hey, if Stossel turns out to be wrong about this, it's not like we can't afford to lose a few people more through drug side-effects, is it? Any kind of FDA has its price. If all drugs have to be reviewed -- even if they can be sold while under review -- the cost in money and energy will keep some drugs off the market. But getting rid of the FDA's power to forbid us to try something would be a big improvement: It would mean Americans would no longer be forced to wait, and die while their government passes judgment on innovations that could save them. After all, if a new drug makes life better for thousands of people, kills a few hundred, and makes a few dozen really, really rich -- over all, wasn't it worth it to ban the FDA and let the free market sort things out?  Oh, and this wasn't the first time Stossel's proposed this solution.  Back in January 2004, in a speech before The Independent Institute, he used the same material about how the FDA saved us from thalidomide, but he now wishes it hadn't, because that success just allowed the agency to become really big and think it's the boss of drugs; and the anecdote about how FDA killed 14,000 people a year for fifteen years by not releasing a beta blocker sooner; and the claim that there are fat substitutes still in the FDA pipeline (ewww!) that could save the lives of thousands of fat people who didn't mind a little anal leakage.  Then he added: And when I say this to less-informed groups, people say: “Well, it just sounds too scary. What are you saying, Stossel, not have an FDA? These creeps would poison us, these greedy businesses.” First of all, I don’t think companies like killing their customers. [Laughter] But even assuming they did, why in a free society do we meekly sit there and allow the government to be a police agency that says, “No, you are forbidden.” Yeah, if companies like killing their customers, why shouldn't we be free to die if they want us to? Why couldn’t it be an information agency? The companies that wanted to submit their drug to the arduous process would, and those of us who were cautious would only take those FDA-approved drugs. But if you were dying, if you had a terminal illness, you could try something without having to break your country’s laws and import something illegally from Europe or sneak to some dubious clinic in Mexico. And what we would learn from those trials would save other lives later. And if what we learned was that you would have lived several years longer and would have saved yourself a great deal of pain and a great deal of money by not taking some unscientific nostrum, then we have profited from your stupidity, and the drug manufacturer has profited from your gullibility, so there is no down side, except for you.  I’d go further and say that you really don’t need the government to even be the information agency, because as we should have learned from the fall of the Soviet Union, government agencies don’t do things well. And that's why we should rely on the free market for our national defense.  And in any case, isn’t leaving us a choice what America’s supposed to be about? Patrick Henry didn’t say, “Give me absolute safety or give me death.” It’s supposed to be about freedom. And Nathan Hale didn't say, "I regret that I have but one life to give for Pfizer, Inc, the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company, by trying out their untested fat-cell killing drug" -- but he would have, if Pfizer had been around back then.  After all, it's supposed to be about free enterprise and profits and stuff.   Those are the principles on which America was founded. 5:36:19 AM

"Who Said It?" Answers Time to reveal the winners and losers from yesterday's game (the losers would be the Mystery Guests). Everybody ready?  Okay, here goes: 1. Gary Aldrich - a point to D. Sidhe (plus a bonus point for getting the right number :-)  And a style point to Sour Kraut for, "I don't think we can rule out MacGruff the Crime Dog, whose powerful nose proved the crack pipe/prophylactic allegations beyond a resonable doubt. Either way, it's clearly a miscarriage of justice that Bill and Hillary were not tried for Felony Decorating and executed by firing squad."   BTW, style points are only good towards special Style Merchandise, such as these bullet earring, courtesy of Ballistic Fashions ("Fine crafted jewelry made from real bullets"):          2.  Mark Steyn -  a point to bgn. A bonus point to Yosef for guessing that this was Adam Yoshida, because we love the idea of people confusing Adam (the guy who lives in his parents' basement) with Steyn (who is, per his publisher, "probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the English-speaking world."    And a style point to Sour Kraut for the following guess: "Either Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons (excessive Star Wars references, duh) or maybe Dinesh D'Sousa, who is certainly pompous enough to use that description of himself. There doesn't seem to be any race-baiting here, though, so probably not." 3.  James Lileks.  Nobody got this one.  Don't you people know that Lileks has started a screed blog in order to try to keep his ranting from alarming Joe Ohio and his other imaginary friends? Anyway, your ignorance will cost you, in that I will post part of today's screed, which is about Howard Dean's comment that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party." “White Christian Party” has the advantage of Kluxer overtones, which plays into another hard-left paranoia: all them Jaysus people are a step away from whipping up a batch o' pointy hats with pillow cases and a can of spray starch, and marching into a field to hold hands around a cross and listen to someone demand that the entire book of Leviticus be made an amendment to the Constitution. The only one, for that matter. Yeah, I'm sure that's the effect that Dean was going for. Anyway, a style point to Sour Kraut, who guessed that our Mystery Guest was "Cardinal Richelieu, who is clearly disgusted at the torture methods employed at Guantanamo. ('Defiling Holy Books? Amateurs.')" And another style point to Tara, who guessed that this was "An illiterate book-hater, possibly George W. Bush." 4.  Dennis Prager - a point to Vivek. And a style point to Tara for guessing that this was, "Idi Amin, who patented the "We're the victim of that mean Amnesty International" gig long before the wingnuts here came up with it." 5.  Mike Adams - a point to Clif. And a style point to Tara for saying this was "Charlton Heston when he was a fetus." 6.  Rush Limbaugh - another point to D. Sidhe. A style point to Sour Kraut, who suspected that this was "Smith-Barney, expressing their admiration for making money the new old-fashioned way--they 'earn' it And a style point to Tara, who thought Rush was "the ex-cellent Montgomery Burns." Congratulations to all our winners, who may use their Substance Points towards such exciting Substance Merchandise as this: Hippies Smell Spaghetti Tank $21.99 Stinky, stinky hippie!  Yes, get enough points, and you can let people know, via your shirt, that hippies smell spaghetti and tanks.  (And if you never get enough points, you can buy the shirt yourself at All Right Gear, home of "Liberals Suck" T-shirts, and other sophisticated political raiment.)  1:42:53 AM