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FDA Bureaucrats Kill 150,000 Americans

Posted on November 4, 2014 in Liberator Online by James W. Harris Comments are off
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(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.

They Said It… With Hillary Clinton, Pat Buchanan, and More

Posted on October 26, 2014 in Liberator Online by James W. Harris Comments are off
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(From the They Said It section in Volume 19, No. 18 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

Hillary ClintonHILLARY:  “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” — Hillary Clinton, speaking at a political rally in Massachusetts, Oct 24, 2014. (Clinton supporters claim she is quoted out of context; you can find their argument here.)

INSANITY:
Pat Buchanan“We borrow from Japan and Europe to defend Japan and Europe, though World War II has been over for 70 years.” —Pat Buchanan, “Things Fall Apart,” syndicated column, Oct. 24, 2014.

UH-OH: “The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly Janet Yellinconcern me. …I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity. …In such circumstances, society faces difficult questions of how best to fairly and justly promote equal opportunity.” — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellin in a speech entitled “Perspectives on Inequality and Opportunity from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Oct. 17, 2014.

THE NEW CONSUMER REGULATION:
Mark J. Perry“It’s important to remember that Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts are already very heavily regulated, and in some ways they are regulated even more intensely than traditional taxis or hotels by a very ruthless group of regulators — the consumers who use their services and can rate each driver after every Uber ride and rate each host after every Airbnb stay. And the regulation goes both ways — the Uber drivers rate their passengers and the Airbnb hosts rate their guests. So the issue really isn’t a choice between government regulation and a completely unregulated sharing economy; the issue really is who is the primary regulator: a) government bureaucrats and legislators who are often captured by regulated industries like taxi cartels (Big Taxi), or b) the consumers.” — Mark J. Perry, “In the battle between sharing economy entrepreneurs and regulators, I’ll bet on the entrepreneurs like Uber and Airbnb ,” Carpe Diem blog, American Enterprise Institute, Oct. 23, 2014.

Cut Military Spending by 60%: Libertarian Candidates Pledge

Posted on October 6, 2014 in Liberator Online, Military by James W. Harris Comments are off
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(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 16 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

Cut Military Spending by 60%As we noted last issue, scores of Libertarian Party candidates for federal office have pledged to downsize the bloated federal government — in four big and specific ways:

  • Eliminate the federal income tax
  • End the War on Drugs
  • Abolish the NSA
  • Cut military spending by 60%

We’re exploring each of these pledges in detail, one per issue, because the Libertarian Party has done a great job of showing that these bold proposals are not only possible, they are practical and enormously beneficial. (Of course, you can jump ahead of us and read about all four positions right now.)

Let’s look at the pledge to cut military spending by 60% or more. The candidates pledge: “If elected, I will sponsor legislation to cut military spending by 60% or more and cut total federal spending accordingly; close all foreign U.S. military bases; withdraw completely from the Middle East; and bring our troops home.”

Here are the benefits, according to the Libertarians:

* A non-interventionist foreign policy will result in less hostility towards the United States and reduce the risk of a terrorist attack.

* There is no justification for forcing U.S. taxpayers to fund the military defense of other nations, including wealthy countries such as France, Germany and Japan.

* Cutting the U.S. military by 60 percent does not remove one cent of U.S. military defense spending — only military offense, defense of other countries, and waste.

* An oversized military budget is a war waiting to happen. Needless war results in untold death and destruction — the greatest assault on human liberty. A lean, reasonably-sized military budget will save lives, avoid casualties, preserve personal property and community infrastructures, and foster peace.

* Voters want to downsize the U.S. military. According to a survey by the Stimson Center, Democratic, Republican and independent voters all want to cut military spending “far more severely than the sequester would” and “far, far more severely than either party has proposed.”

* Closing foreign bases and withdrawing from the Middle East means that U.S. troops stationed abroad can come home to their families. Kids will grow up with mom and dad at home.

* Fewer casualties will reduce demand on the Veterans Administration, which will improve the care of America’s wounded soldiers.

* Downsizing the military will force the reduction and consolidation of 18 separate spy agencies — the surest way to end the government’s spying on innocent citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

* A right-sized military will be auditable, will squeeze out its legendary waste and will put an end to overpriced and unneeded multi-billion-dollar procurements that politicians lobby for to “bring home the bacon” to their districts.* A non-interventionist policy will reduce trade barriers, resulting in greater prosperity for both Americans and our trading partners.

* Cutting the military by 60 percent will enable substantial cuts in federal taxes and stop the growth of the national debt. If applied to the income tax, each American family will get back, on average, $4,100 — every year. If used to balance the budget, it will eliminate approximately 70 percent of the deficit and stop today’s rapid inflation of the dollar. This will stabilize prices on everyday goods and services and dramatically reduce the risk of an economic collapse.

* Transferring wealth out of the government sector and into the private sector will create sustainable, productive jobs — approximately twice as many jobs as will be lost in the government sector. A net increase of millions of new jobs.

Libertarian Party: Stay Out of Ukraine — and Everywhere Else

Posted on March 13, 2014 in Foreign Policy, Liberator Online, War by James W. Harris Comments are off
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(From the Intellectual Ammunition section in Volume 19, No. 5 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

While the Republicans and Democrats argue about where the U.S. military should intervene next, and how many more billions of tax dollars to spend doing so, the Libertarian Party is singing a very different song.

“Libertarians are lining up to run for federal office in 2014 on a platform to cutSyria & Ukrainemilitary spending immediately by at least 60 percent, close a substantial number of overseas military bases, and bring troops home,” says a news release by the Libertarian Party.

Specific Libertarian proposals to downsize the U.S. military, while keeping America far safer than now, include:

  • Immediately withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and bring them home to their families.
  • Stay out of Syria, Ukraine, and every other foreign conflict.
  • Close unneeded U.S. military bases and outposts in more than 130 countries around the world, and bring our troops home. First on the list are the massive deployments in Germany, Italy, South Korea, and Japan — countries that can, and should, fund their own military defense.
  • Close at least half of the nation’s 4,402 domestic Department of Defense sites.
  • Use 100 percent of operating cost savings to reduce the federal income tax, balance the federal budget, or both.
  • Sell off all foreign and domestic real estate holdings of closed military bases and Department of Defense sites — while requiring that all proceeds be used to pay down existing government debt. Not a penny of this money, stresses the Libertarians, should pay for more government spending.

All of this is consistent with the Libertarian Party’s platform on National Defense, which reads: “We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.”

Plus, said Geoffrey J. Neale, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, it just plain makes sense.

“Reducing and eliminating military bases in foreign countries will remove a major source of hostility towards the United States, reduce the threat of a terrorist attack, and reduce federal government debt by $300 billion,” Neale said.

“Cutting military spending by $600 billion every year will go a long way toward balancing the federal budget and ending the federal income tax,” he said. “This will give back $5,000 every year to each taxpaying family in the United States; stimulate investment in small businesses; and create millions of sustainable, private-sector jobs. Plenty of jobs for veterans and millions of others now out of work.”

Learn more about America’s fastest-growing political party, the Libertarian Party, at their website.