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Tag: Intellectual Ammunition

Yale Professor: Every Law Has a Death Penalty

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on Yale Professor: Every Law Has a Death Penalty

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 24 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Stephen Carter, a distinguished Yale law professor and author of 12 acclaimed books, says he startles his new law students with a vital but little-understood truth about law and government: “On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce,” he writes at Bloomberg View. “Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you. “I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law. … “Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right.”

Libertarian Party: Shut Down CIA, Prosecute Torturers

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Communicating Liberty. No Comments on Libertarian Party: Shut Down CIA, Prosecute Torturers

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 24 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) The Libertarian Party says there’s only one way to deal with the new revelations of CIA torture and the tortureagency’s long history of other crimes: shut down the CIA and other rogue, out-of-control spy agencies. Says Libertarian National Committee Chair Nicholas J. Sarwark: “The CIA’s practice of torture confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Report released on December 9 shows the agency engaged in reprehensible and illegal behaviors that were, in effect, war crimes. “The CIA and politicians redacted the bulk of the government’s report, which remains withheld from public view. One can only speculate as to the additional horrors that lie within the rest of the report, given the gravity of what was revealed. “These acts of torture were immoral, disgusting, and un-American. And… they were ineffective. “Yet the CIA and the Department of Justice, which sanctioned the torture, claim that it was legal and exhibit a shocking lack of remorse for the brutality inflicted on its victims. “Whether it’s choking a man to death for selling loose cigarettes in New York or torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the government refuses to prosecute government employees who brutalize the vulnerable. When the government investigates itself, it almost always clears itself of any wrongdoing. “This is why we must shut down the CIA.” Sarwark points out that the 70-year history of the CIA is ” littered with episodes of human rights violations, illegal activities, and deception,” including:
  • Targeted killings and assassinations
  • Overthrowing democratically elected governments
  • Human experimentation, including giving the hallucinogenic drug LSD to U.S. and Canadian citizens without their knowledge
  • Dealing heroin in Asia
  • Spying on Americans, members of congress, and foreign leaders
  • Shipping war prisoners to foreign countries where torture is permissible (“extraordinary rendition”)
  • Lying to Congress
“Government-sanctioned torture is bipartisan,” Sarwark adds, noting that Republican President George W. Bush authorized the torture revealed in the Senate report, and President Barack Obama granted him full immunity. Torturers still hold high positions in government. “Famed journalist Glenn Greenwald said ‘The Obama administration’s aggressive, full-scale whitewashing of the ‘War on Terror’ crimes committed by Bush officials is now complete.’ “Whereas Democrats and Republicans have continually funded and encouraged CIA war crimes, the Libertarian Party has consistently and strongly opposed the use of torture, mass surveillance, and human rights violations by the U.S. government throughout the party’s 43-year history. “The Libertarian Party calls for real accountability, including prosecuting all of those who authorized and performed these brutal acts.”

New Ayn Rand Novel to Be Published

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on New Ayn Rand Novel to Be Published

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 23 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) A never-before-published novel by Ayn Rand will be hitting the bookstores in a few months — the first Ayn IdealRand novel to be published in over 50 years. According to the publisher the short novel, entitled Ideal, “tells the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run, and she turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal — a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul. Each reacts to her plight in his own way, their reactions a glimpse into their secret selves and their true values…” Rand wrote Ideal in 1934, when she was in her late 20s. Unhappy with it, she put it aside and turned it into a play, which was never performed in her lifetime and went unpublished until the 1986 collection The Early Ayn Rand, edited by Leonard Peikoff of the Ayn Rand Institute. Peikoff described the play as a “philosophical murder mystery.” The novel remained buried in the archives at the Ayn Rand Institute until 2012, when it was rediscovered while Rand’s papers were being digitized. New American Library will publish both the novel (135 pages) and the play together on July 7, 2015. Ayn Rand, who died in 1982, is of course most famous for her enormously influential bestseller Atlas Shrugged, which helped set off the modern libertarian movement and has, incredibly, remained in hardback since its first publication in 1957. Together her novels, including The Fountainhead and We The Living, have sold over 25 million copies.

Study: States with Economic Liberty Benefit; States Without Economic Liberty Suffer

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Economic Liberty, Liberator Online. No Comments on Study: States with Economic Liberty Benefit; States Without Economic Liberty Suffer

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 23 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) A just-released study shows that U.S. states with economic liberty benefit greatly from it, while residents of states with less economic freedom suffer badly from the lack of it. Economic Freedom of North America 2014 is an annual report by Canada’s Fraser Institute that measures levels of economic freedom, and thus economic opportunity, in the 50 states (as well as Canada and Mexico). Economic Freedom of North America 2014The report defines “economic freedom” as “the ability of individuals to act in the economic sphere free of undue restrictions.” Elaborating on that: “The freest economies operate with minimal government interference, relying upon personal choice and markets to answer basic economic questions such as what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, how much is produced, and for whom production is intended. As government imposes restrictions on these choices, there is less economic freedom.” The report shows that economic liberty has clear, measurable, dollars-and-cents benefits, writes study co-author Dean Stansel in the Washington Examiner: “States that have low taxation, limited government and flexible labor markets enjoy greater economic growth, while states with lower levels of economic freedom suffer from reduced living standards for families and less economic opportunity. “In the three most-free states (Texas, South Dakota, and North Dakota) average personal income is about 20 percent higher than in the three least-free states (Maine, Vermont, and Mississippi) — approximately $48,000 versus $40,000. And the unemployment rate is more than seven percent in Rhode Island (45th) versus about four percent in nearby New Hampshire (5th). “Furthermore, cities in low-freedom states like California (43rd), Michigan (37th), and Rhode Island have made headlines in recent years for declaring bankruptcy, whereas cities in high-freedom states like Nebraska (5th), Texas, and the Dakotas, have seen incomes and their tax bases expand. “In the top ten states, total employment grew by roughly 3.5 percent, while it has barely budged in the bottom 10. Over that same period, the economy grew more than eight percent in the top 10, but only by about two percent in the bottom 10.” Concludes Stansel: “The research is clear: Where economic freedom is high and rising, the number of jobs is expanding and the economy is vibrant and growing. Where it’s low and declining, the economy is stagnant, limiting opportunity and quality of life for residents of those states. “Big, costly government at the expense of the people doesn’t work. It leads to economic decline. In contrast, expanding economic freedom increases economic opportunity and provides the path to economic prosperity.” The report ranks economic freedom along a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (full economic liberty). This brings a warning: “Historically, economic freedom has been declining in all three countries. Since 2000, the average score for Canadian provinces on the all-governments index has fallen from 7.8 to 7.6; the number for U.S. states was 8.2 to 7.5.” The Economic Freedom of North America study is an offshoot of the Fraser Institute’s acclaimed Economic Freedom of the World index, the result of a quarter century of work by more than 60 scholars including three Nobel laureates.

How Free Enterprise Saved the Pilgrims: A Thanksgiving Story

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on How Free Enterprise Saved the Pilgrims: A Thanksgiving Story

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 22 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Thanksgiving Day is a great time to remember, and share with others, the too-Pilgrimslittle-known story of how the Pilgrims discovered and embraced the power of individual incentives and private property — and how doing this saved them from looming starvation and death. This story has been told in many different forms over the years, and some critics have challenged versions of it. Our thanks to the Cato Institute’s Daniel Griswold for sharing a definitive version of the story, from the work of one of America’s most respected and honored historians. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick has won numerous prestigious awards for his books. His acclaimed 2007 book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War was a New York Times Bestseller, a finalist for both the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and was named one of the ten “Best Books of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review. A passage from that book succinctly tells the story of how free enterprise principles and incentives saved the Pilgrims. Writes Philbrick: “The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages. For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally — the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done to increase the annual yield. “In April, [Plymouth Colony governor William] Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. “The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. “‘The women now went willingly into the field,’ Bradford wrote, ‘and took their little ones with them to set corn.'” Concludes Philbrick: “The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.” Governor Bradford tells the story himself in his book History of Plymouth Plantation, taken from his journals kept between 1630 and 1651, and recognized today as an American classic. Bradford describes the problems of the communal system (spelling has been modernized): “For this community [of food and property] . . . was found to breed much confusion and discontentment, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort . . . “For the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong . . . had no more in division . . . than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes, etc . . . thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.” Bradford then describes the dramatic results of the shift to private plots and individual incentives: “This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.” As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we should remember that our great abundance today is based upon our system of private property rights and free enterprise. Principles that the Pilgrims discovered for themselves, in rudimentary form, and began putting into practice nearly four hundred years ago. Those principles saved their lives. Eventually, they made America the freest and most abundant country in human history. Today they offer the promise of still greater blessings to come. And that’s something to be very thankful for — this and every Thanksgiving.

VIDEO: The Pilgrims and Property Rights — How Our Ancestors Got Fat & Happy

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on VIDEO: The Pilgrims and Property Rights — How Our Ancestors Got Fat & Happy

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 22 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

Thanks to ReasonTV for a short and funny video that covers the essential points of property rights and free enterprise we explored in this article.

Great for sharing online with friends and family. About 2:30 minutes.

Silicon Valley Innovators: Gov’t Is Biggest Barrier to U.S. Innovation

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on Silicon Valley Innovators: Gov’t Is Biggest Barrier to U.S. Innovation

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 21 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Innovation's biggest barrierWhat’s the worst drag on American technical innovation? According to some of the most creative and successful people in America, it’s… government. In a new “Silicon Valley Insiders Poll,” The Atlantic asked 50 “Silicon Valley Insiders” — described as leading “executives, innovators, and thinkers” — this question: “What’s the biggest barrier to innovation in the United States?” The top three answers:
  1. “Government regulation/bureaucracy” — cited by 20% of respondents. 
  2. “Immigration policies” — cited by 16%.
  3. “Education” — yet another thumping government failure — cited by 14%. 
As Reason’s Nick Gillespie notes in the Daily Beast: “Given the role it plays in setting immigration policy and controlling education at all levels through a mix of money and mandates, that means government takes the gold, silver, and bronze medals at making life harder.” (Fourth place was “Talent Shortage,” cited by 10% of respondents, which is also at least in part a consequence of the second and third government-created barriers.) Further, it’s not just the tech sector reporting serious damage from government. A 2010 survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses asked small business owners to identify the biggest problems they face. Twenty-two percent of respondents said the single most important problem facing small businesses was “Taxes. Another thirteen percent said “Government Regulations and Red Tape.” Both, of course, are direct manifestations of Big Government. Combined, they add up to 35% — making Big Government the biggest problem small businesses say they face. And Americans in general seem to agree. As we reported earlier this year, a Gallup poll found a record 72% of Americans picked big government as “the biggest threat to this country in the future” compared with big business or big labor.

Rand Paul: “I’ll Do Everything to End the War on Drugs”

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on Rand Paul: “I’ll Do Everything to End the War on Drugs”

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 21 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) On his HBO show last Friday (Nov. 14), Bill Maher asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) about remarks Rand Paulhe made in 2000 concerning the War on Drugs: BILL MAHER: “You said in 2000, ‘The War on Drugs is an abysmal failure and a waste of money.’ Are you still on that page?” RAND PAUL: “I’m absolutely there, and I’ll do everything to end the War on Drugs…. “The War on Drugs has become the most racially disparate outcome that you have in the entire country. Our prisons are full of black and brown kids. Three-fourths of the people in prison are black or brown, and white kids are using drugs, Bill, as you know…at the same rate as these other kids. But kids who have less means, less money, kids who are in areas where police are patrolling… Police are given monetary incentives to make arrests, monetary incentives for their own departments… “So I want to end the War on Drugs because it’s wrong for everybody, but particularly because poor people are caught up in this, and their lives are ruined by it.” Paul also strongly defended sentencing reform and restoring voting rights to non-violent former felons. Paul further indicated his opposition to the federal War on Drugs during an early November discussion on the Washington, D.C. marijuana legalization vote. Paul told Roll Call that he strongly favors getting the federal government out of such matters: “I’m not for having the federal government get involved. I really haven’t taken a stand on … the actual legalization. I haven’t really taken a stand on that, but I’m against the federal government telling [Washington, DC] they can’t,” Paul said. “I think there should be a certain amount of discretion for both states and territories and the District. I think really that when we set up our country, we intended that most crime or not crime, things that we determined to be crime or not crimes, was really intended to be determined by localities.” His father Ron Paul sometimes has taken that position or one similar to it, calling for ending the federal War on Drugs and leaving it up to states to decide whether or not they want to pursue drug prohibition. This let-the-states-decide position is also the premise upon which alcohol Prohibition was repealed in the 1930s.

The Greatest Achievement in Human History?

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on The Greatest Achievement in Human History?

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 20 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Despite the best efforts of government to restrict or sometimes even outlaw free markets, free enterprise has brought us perhaps the greatest achievement in history: the largest and fastest reduction in worldwide poverty ever. This good news comes from economist Douglas A. Irwin’s November 2 Wall Street Journal piece “The Ultimate Global Antipoverty Program.” The subhead gives the essence of the story: “Extreme poverty fell to 15% in 2011, from 36% in 1990. Credit goes to the spread of capitalism.” Writes Irwin:
The World Bank reported on Oct. 9 that the share of the world population living in extreme poverty had fallen to 15% in 2011 from 36% in 1990. Earlier this year, the International Labor Office reported that the number of workers in the world earning less than $1.25 a day has fallen to 375 million 2013 from 811 million in 1991. … The economic progress of China and India, which are home to more than 35% of the world’s population, explains much of the global poverty decline. But many other countries, from Colombia to Vietnam, have enacted their own reforms. … Such stunning news seems to have escaped public notice, but it means something extraordinary: The past 25 years have witnessed the greatest reduction in global poverty in the history of the world.
And free enterprise deserves the credit, Irwin emphasizes: “To what should this be attributed? Official organizations noting the trend have tended to waffle, but let’s be blunt: The credit goes to the spread of capitalism. Over the past few decades, developing countries have embraced economic-policy reforms that have cleared the way for private enterprise.” In contrast, “The poorest parts of the world are precisely those that are cut off from the world of markets and commerce, often because of government policies.” Why haven’t we heard more about this? Why isn’t the world cheering? Says Irwin: “The reduction in world poverty has attracted little attention because it runs against the narrative pushed by those hostile to capitalism. The Michael Moores of the world portray capitalism as a degrading system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Yet thanks to growth in the developing world, world-wide income inequality — measured across countries and individual people — is falling, not rising, as Branco Milanovic of City University of New York and other researchers have shown.” We have often said that spreading the ideas of liberty is “the great Cause that makes all other great causes possible,” and that liberty is literally a life-and-death matter for the people of the world. Here is proof of that. Everyone working in our great Cause can take encouragement from this extraordinary leap forward — and redouble our efforts to remove the shackles of poverty and oppression from all the people of the world.

New FBI Report: Savage U.S. Marijuana War Continues, Despite Majority Support for Re-Legalization

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on New FBI Report: Savage U.S. Marijuana War Continues, Despite Majority Support for Re-Legalization

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 20 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) A solid majority of Americans now favor re-legalizing marijuana. Many states have eased laws War on Drugspersecuting marijuana smokers, and four states and the District of Columbia have even re-legalized it. Yet governments at all levels continue to wage a costly, pointless, and ferocious war against peaceful marijuana users. In early November the FBI released its annual Uniform Crime Report, which gives the best look at marijuana arrests and related statistics. It covers the latest year for which figures are available, 2013. Among the findings:
  • The good news: arrest numbers are down, slightly. In 2013, there were 693,481 arrests for marijuana charges. In 2012, there were 749,825. However, despite years of growing support for re-legalization, there were actually fewer arrests back in 1998 (682,885).
  • As always, the vast majority of these arrests — a whopping 88% — were for simple possession. 
  • The remaining 12% of arrests were for “sale/manufacture,” a broad category that includes all cultivation offenses — even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. 
  • Marijuana arrests make up 40.6% of all drug arrests, making it clear that the War on Drugs is, in reality, largely a War on Marijuana Possession.
  • Nationwide, police make an average of one arrest for marijuana possession every minute.
  • Nationwide, 51.9% of violent crimes and over 80% of property crimes went unsolved or did not result in arrest. Is there a connection?
  • Arrests for mere possession of marijuana cost, at a minimum, roughly half a billion dollars, says NORML, using an ACLU estimate of cost-per-arrest ($750). Other estimates range to several billion dollars. 
  • The effects of an arrest can be devastating, notes Paul Armentano of NORML: 
“Probation and mandatory drug testing; loss of employment; loss of child custody; removal from subsidized housing; asset forfeiture; loss of student aid; loss of voting privileges; loss of adoption rights…” and of course, for some, time behind bars. Mason Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, summed it up nicely: “Arresting even one adult for using a substance that is objectively less harmful than alcohol is inexcusable. “Law enforcement officials should be spending their time and resources addressing serious crimes, not arresting and prosecuting adults for using marijuana. Every year, these statistics show hundreds of thousands of marijuana-related arrests are taking place and countless violent crimes are going unsolved. We have to wonder how many of those crimes could be solved — or prevented — if police weren’t wasting their time enforcing failed marijuana prohibition laws.”

Your Tax Dollars Paid for Swedish Massages for Rabbits

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on Your Tax Dollars Paid for Swedish Massages for Rabbits

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 19 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Politicians are warning us that the government is broke. It’s time for higher taxes and belt-tightening. Citizens need to pay more and expect less. But still, our leaders heroically scraped together funding for the most important, the most fundamental, the most essential government functions. Like providing Swedish massages to rabbits. Yep. The National Institutes of Health spent $387,000 on this project. Yes, that’s the same NIH whose director says they “probably” would have come up with a vaccine for Ebola by now, if it wasn’t for low funding (they only get $30 billion a year). And that’s just the beginning. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has released his annual Wastebook report. “Wastebook 2014: What Washington Doesn’t Want You To Read” identifies “100 silly, unnecessary, and low priority projects” that lay bare Washington’s loony spending priorities. Wastebook Total bill for these one hundred projects? A whopping $25 billion. And, Sen. Coburn warns, this is “just a fraction of the countless frivolous projects the government funded in the past twelve months — with borrowed money and your tax dollars.” Sen. Coburn further notes: “Despite all of this obvious waste, Washington politicians celebrated ending the fiscal year with a deficit under half-a-trillion dollars for the first time since 2008 — as if adding $486 billion to a national debt quickly approaching $18 trillion is an actual accomplishment deserving praise.” Here are a few more choice items from Coburn’s Wastebook 2014:
  • $856,000 to teach mountain lions to use treadmills.
  • $307,524 to study whether sea monkeys can be trained to swim. 
  • $371,026 to study whether mothers love their dogs as much as their own children.
  • $804,254 for a video game to empower parents to persuade their kids to eat vegetables.
Just skimming the table of contents rewards you with items like these below. And each one is accompanied by a jaw-dropping description that will have you thinking you’re reading the humorous parody site The Onion:
  • Roosevelt and Elvis Make a Hallucinatory Pilgrimage to Graceland
  • NASA Wonders How Humans Will React to Meeting Space Aliens
  • Anti-Terror Grant Buys State-of-the-Art SWAT Equipment for Safest Small Town in America
  • Spouses Stab Voodoo Dolls More Often When “Hangry,” Study Reveals
  • Scientists Hope Gambling Monkeys Unlock Secrets of Free Will
  • Paid Vacations for Bureaucrats Gone Wild 
  • Taxpayers Help NY Brewery Build Beer Farm
  • Free “High-End” Gym Memberships for DHS Bureaucrats
  • USDA’s “Perfect Poop Pak” Smells Like Government Waste
Page after page, the idiocy and waste goes on and on. Read the whole thing here.

FDA Bureaucrats Kill 150,000 Americans

Written by James W. Harris on . Posted in Liberator Online. No Comments on FDA Bureaucrats Kill 150,000 Americans

(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 19 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Never mind Ebola, terrorists and school shootings. Abolish the FDA What Americans should fear is… the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration). The FDA’s failure to approve life-saving drugs in a timely fashion is killing thousands, even tens of thousands, of Americans every year, critics charge. Take just one example. An estimated 150,000 Americans have died or will die from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis — a disease in which tissue deep in the lungs becomes thick and stiff, or scarred, making breathing difficult — because of the FDA’s four-year delay in the approval of the drug pirfenidone — a drug already approved and marketed in Europe (since 2011), Japan (2008), Canada (2012) and China. That estimate comes from Dr. Henry I. Miller, a medical researcher, founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology, and 15-year member of the FDA. That’s more Americans than were killed in any American war except the Civil War and World War II. And pirfenidone is just one example among many others. The FDA’s slow approval of beta-blocking drugs in the 1970s may have led to the unnecessary deaths of up to 100,000 people, according to Sam Kazman, J.D., of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. For many years the FDA prohibited aspirin makers from advertising the widely-accepted argument that aspirin could significantly reduce the risk of heart attack for some patients. According to economist Paul H. Rubin, “The FDA surely killed tens, and quite possibly hundreds, of thousands of Americans by this restriction alone.” Indeed, says Reason magazine’s science correspondent Ronald Bailey, “the FDA’s increased obsession with safety may be killing more people than it saves. …After all, if it takes the FDA ten years to approve a drug that saves 20,000 lives per year that means that 200,000 people died in the meantime.” The FDA’s approval process can take up to… 18 years. For people desperately fighting fatal illnesses, such long waits are death sentences. Making things worse, the FDA’s review process is so expensive that,according to Yevgeniy Feyman of the Manhattan Institute: “The typical drug approval costs between $1.2 and $1.3 billion.” According to Reason magazine’s Bailey, many drugs that could save lives are never introduced because of this cost. In 2000, economist Daniel B. Klein of the Independent Institute wrote: “Because the FDA process is so expensive, so protracted, and so uncertain, thousands of untold drugs are never discovered or developed. It is impossible to estimate the suffering and death caused, but surely it greatly exceeds 50,000 premature deaths annually.” Why is the FDA so agonizingly (literally) slow and expensive? Prior to 1962, the average time for FDA approval was just seven months. However, in 1962 Congress passed the Kefauver Harris Amendment, which added a new requirement of proof of effectiveness, in addition to the old standard of proof of safety, for approval of new drugs. Effectiveness is a far more difficult, and expensive, standard to meet. Perhaps worst of all, the FDA typically doesn’t give even gravely ill patients the opportunity to choose promising treatments it has not approved. As journalist Kate Jenkins asks: “If you had a fatal disease and were told you only had one year to live, wouldn’t you prefer to be allowed to make your own choice?” This article by Ronald Bailey gives a further look at this mess, and offers libertarian alternatives. The Independent Institute offers an overview of the situtation and proposals for replacing the FDA. And for a great movie that dramatizes this life-and-death struggle, see The Dallas Buyers Club starring Matthew McConaughey.