May 3rd, 2005
A Libertarian View of Cancer
Who says that libertarians can't write articles that are simultaneously good and entertaining? Here's one from Bill Walker that covers a wide range of topics, from the evil done by centralized state control over medicine to cancer, telomeres and future therapies:
If telomerase inhibitors were a new kind of computer chip, they would have been on every Wal-Mart pharmacy shelf and selling for ten dollars a bottle by now. ... In a free system, life insurance companies, consumer magazines, and other competing interests would provide medical databases. Maybe even the AMA would become a force for "truth-in-medicine," as it was to some degree before the creation of the FDA. Under common law but free of arbitrary regulation, drug development would be as fast as computer development. Cancer would be extinct and human beings would finally, really, own their own bodies.
The Mprize for anti-aging research gets a link in the piece as well - something I'd like to see more of.
That was an outstanding article! I'd recommend it to as many people as possible.
My favorite part is his description of what the current regulation system, which supposedly is meant to "protect" us, actually results in:
'Meanwhile, if you or your child get most types of cancer you will die a slow, agonizing (but very profitable) death. You?ll be all: "Make it stop! Make it stoooop!" And the doctor will be all: "The DEA won?t let me give you too many pain drugs. You don?t want me to lose my license, do you?" And you?ll be all: "AHHHHH! AHHHH AUUUGH!" And so on, for several years of immeasurable pain. Sound good to you?'