I’m nowhere near his match, but I’d like to be the Alex Epstein of abolishing the FDA when I grow up. I like the way he attacks along epistemological lines, which are the enemy’s true vulnerability. I’ve been thinking about how to wage the ultimate existential attack on the FDA. It would champion the pro-reason concept of science and attack the mystical authoritarianism the FDA peddles. Since the base of science is reason, the side claiming to represent “science” must prove its claims. The claim that the FDA improves the individual’s or “public’s” health requires proof, of which there is none, so the FDA is the very quackery it claims to be protecting us from. To make it personal to people, I will state my opinion that the FDA takes years off their and their loved one’s lives—but how do I do so without doing exactly what I accuse the other side of (making unsupportable claims)?
Ideas:
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Study the impact the FDA and Kefauver Harris Amendment has had on the rate of medical progress shechange in human lifespan.
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Conduct a scientific survey of inventors and investors and ask them what the greatest barrier to using their new technology to help people.
In a talk about this issue, Yaron Brook said the great difficulty of proving the FDA’s true impact is that you can’t do a “parallel universe” study. There has got to be another way. If it’s a true and real fact, there has got to be a compelling way to capture it
And while I know this cause has no chance of winning anytime soon, it will be satisfying to do it as an end in itself.
Thoughts?
