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Pharmaceutical Freedom (libertarianism.org)
2 points by caramiadare on June 8, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment


"Against medical advice Danny wishes to try to manage his diabetes with insulin. However, Danny cannot legally access diabetes medication without a prescription from his physician."

The option of changing one's physician never came up.

The question of so-called "pharmaceutical freedom" isn't so strawman as that.

"I say, typically or in general people are gonna be experts about their own interest."

If someone has 6 months to live, do you think they have the time to be an expert in cancer treatments, and an expert about the many ways to fleece dying people hoping for a hail-mary treatment option? I don't.

"The first way is just that people suffer and die waiting for access to a drug that could potentially benefit them and that they judge could potentially benefit them because they can’t qualify to participate in the approval process."

This is unbalanced logic. People could also suffer and die from taking an unapproved drug which causes more harm than good. People could have their life savings sucked dry for treatments which are worse than doing nothing.

The things is, we know the FDA has had problems. AIDS activists pushed changes to make it easier for HIV drugs to come on the market. But there needs to be evidence, and a balancing of the factors.

Like most articles on this topic, the focus is on the FDA. But the FDA isn't the only organization which regulates drugs.

If fewer regulations lead to better drug development, why isn't these treatments appearing in other countries with more lax standards?




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