From: Brian Manning Delaney (bdelaney@infinitefaculty.org)
Date: Thu Jun 01 2000 - 12:35:30 MDT
Daniel Ust <Technotranscendence> wrote, in Message-ID
<00a901bfc612$86414a40$e287ecd1@neptune>:
> It's more a matter of getting rid of government
> bodies, such as the US FDA, which currently
> control drug approval.
While I think the FDA is a mess, and needs to be overhauled
radically, if not replaced, I see no evidence that it should be
eliminated entirely (with no replacement).
Here's an old Sci.life-extension post of mine that spells this
out a bit more. Pardon self-quoting. (My views on what's
desirable include marginally libertarian elements as well, which
are not represented below.)
(I bring this up for many reasons. One is to stress again the
complicated nature, for U.S. Extropian voters, of the choice
between Bush and Gore.)
-----------------------------
Subject: The FDA, life-extension, and libertarianism (was Re:
[POLITICS])
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 14: From:
Brian Manning Delaney <bdelaney@infinitefaculty.org>
Newsgroups: sci.life-extension, sci.med.nutrition,
misc.health.alternative
>> "Martin E. Lewitt" wrote:
>> > In article <7mvh8b$vif$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>> > Brian Manning Delaney <delaney_on_road@my-deja.com> wrote:
[....]
> Don't want to get off topic, but libertarianism
> is relevant to life extension and to the issues
> discussed in this group for obvious reasons: If
> the FDA regulators had their way, most of the
> supplements that we take would have been banned
> or severely restricted a long time ago.
What "we"? Supplements have either no effect, or a marginal
effect on longevity. Life-extension includes more than
anti-aging efforts, true, and if that's all you mean, then sure.
But here's one recipe/scenario for delaying the development of
dramatically effective longevity-enhancing regimens:
1) Make false or exaggerated claims in ads about the efficacy of
life-extension supplements.
2) Paint government regulation, toto genere, as bad.
3) Since many people will now think A) the threat of limited
access to supplements will appreciably shorten their lives, and
B) the FDA are wrongly attempting to limit access to
supplements, the supplement industry can now count on the public
to do much of their work for them (by, for example, mouthing
unthinking libertarian platitudes such as: "the FDA has murdered
millions").
4) This, of course, makes the FDA more defensive, and thus more
liable to be even more stupid than it's already capable of
being, which makes step #2 easier.
5) (cycle)
6) People put less money and energy into creative enterprises
such as Thomas Mahoney's venture [1], Geron, etc. -- investments
which are far more likely to give us more life than the purchase
of supplements will.
If libertarians focussed on reversing bans on fetal cell
research, stem cell research, etc. (which bans are, fortunately,
not yet absolute in the U.S.), and the funding thereof, then
they'd be a positive force for life-extension. And some
libertarians do, of course, have such a focus. Those
libertarians who, on the other hand, simply seek to increase the
consumer base for largely worthless pills are a pernicious
force, since they help supplement-pushers perpetuate the myth
that supplements have a significant effect on longevity, which
distracts us from the real work needed to be done to retard
aging.
If people could be brought into a full awareness that these
pills are going to do either nothing (or next to nothing) to
prevent them from being dead dead dead in a disturbingly
diminutive number of decades, then these many millions (I think
it's actually billions, now) of dollars could be better directed
-- for example, towards BASIC SCIENCE from which will come the
tools to stop aging entirely (and then reverse it).
In sum:
Supplements: The Fatal Distraction.
Supplement Pushers: The Malicious, Selfish Distracters.
Supplement Sellers: The Unwitting Distracters.
Libertarian Political Philosophy: The Grease in The Distraction
Machine.
Supplement Consumers: The (Distractedly) Dead Or Dying.
(FDA: The bumblers who make libertarianism's grease easier to
apply.)
Supplement-pushers give people the God to have hope in (even the
wafers), and libertarians provide the Devil to revile
(government regulators, who try to confuse us with their
sophistical, forked-tongued talk of "p values," "statistical
significance," "in vivo vs. in vitro," and all that annoying
stuff).
Something to love, something to hate. Nice & simple. No assembly
required. Why ask why?
Best,
Brian.
P.S. Note that libertarianism is problematic, to me, mostly for
reasons having nothing to do with life-extension.
[1] I haven't investigated his ideas thoroughly enough to be
able to endorse them unqualifiedly, but I do think his general
business approach is great. (And he seems like a good man.)
http://home.earthlink.net/~excelife/index.html for more.
-- Brian Manning Delaney I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. -Nietzsche. Help me .. tear down my reason. -Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails.
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