The idea that bureaucrats and scientists should be able to decide what experiments a terminally ill patient should be allowed to participate in is a deeply evil one.
We have experience of what sort of quack "medicine" appears when unscrupulous people take advantage of the hopes of the terminally ill for personal gain.
Is that what you want us to return to? Or do you have a way to prevent it?
Here's a real-world example - https://www.livescience.com/4040-dying-desperate-lure-quack-... .
People in the US in the last months of their lives, in desperation, go to Mexico for "treatment" by methods which have never ever worked.
> One hospital we visited offered homeopathic treatments. (Homeopathy is a form of quack medicine essentially based on the mystical principle of "like cures like.")
> Another, respectable-looking hospital offered such "alternative" treatments for cancer as shark cartilage, mega-doses of vitamins, and "prayer therapy." The hospital also offered Laetrile, a notorious cancer treatment discredited by repeated scientific studies.
> ... Donsbach's clinic had a reputation for providing questionable medical procedures, including "ultraviolet blood purification," colonics (a potentially dangerous colon-irrigation therapy), and the use of microwaves to "heat" cancer cells.
This is what you want, everywhere, yes?
Do you disagree with all individual restrictions? Should we eliminate the concept of prescription drugs, so that anyone can go buy Adderall or Accutane without a doctor's approval?
Yes, and Yes.
I believe all drugs should be legal, and OTC. I own my own body and what I choose to consume is none of anyone business but my own.
The idea that you should have any say at all as to what chemicals I consume is absurd to me.
Do you support say making it illegal for a person to buy their own brakes for their car? Instead forcing people only to have their cars repaired by government certified mechanics?
It seems odd to me that we allow anyone to work on a car, something that could actually endanger others, yet we severally restrict what people can do to themselves
I am 100% for complete and total individual freedom provided that freedom is not directly harming OTHER PEOPLE, I am opposed to any restrictions upon my individual liberty which includes my liberty to harm myself up to and including suicide
These evil practices all work to stop people having access to things as basic as Elixir sulfanilamide[1], Thalidomide[2].
If only there were already some example of the FDA allowing victims of terminal diseases to have access to drugs that might save their lives if there was overwhelming evidence that they would at the very least work? Like imagine if a drug demonstrated an immediate overwhelming success in treatment but had not yet had sufficient trials to determine side effects and safety? HIV victims could certainly have benefited from AZT before the full side effect profiles were known. It's so sad that they didn't get access to it. Oh wait, they did [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elixir_sulfanilamide - "We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part."
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Adverse_effects - It did work for morning sickness, but an evil scientist at the FDA had stopped it from being sold in the US, depriving expectant mothers of helpful relief
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zidovudine - HIV and AZT actually did result in the laws allowing exemptions for terminal cases. The difference between those, and "right to try" nonsense is that the terminal disease exemptions still require a degree of solid evidence of function, and a demonstration of safety vs alternatives.
The FDA restricts "snake oil" sales by requiring products be marketed based on good data. Remove that requirement and patients will be bombarded by marketers and salespeople peddling exaggerated claims to get at the potentially lucrative right to sell a drug