ABOLISHFDA

Food and Drug Administration

Your body. The government’s permission slip.

Official story

What they claim to do

Ensures the safety and effectiveness of drugs, medical devices and the food supply.

Ground truth

What they actually do

Bringing a new drug to market typically takes about a decade and costs billions of dollars. Congress had to pass the Right to Try Act in 2018 to let some terminally ill patients bypass the approval process.

The libertarian case

Economists from Milton Friedman to Alex Tabarrok have argued that FDA caution has a hidden body count: the patients who die waiting never make the news. Private certifiers, doctors and patients can weigh risk themselves, and tort liability punishes real harm. Nobody needs permission to make decisions about their own body.

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