Re: Libertarianism and antibiotics

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Nov 12 2002 - 15:15:45 MST


--- Damien Sullivan <phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> But now vancomycin bacteria are cropping up -- vancomycin being the
> antibiotic
> of last resort. Your use of antimicrobial soap or bad use of medical
> antibiotics increases my risk of dying. Sounds like a real market
> failure to me.
> Anders, you might think about staying in Sweden -- at least they
> seem to be taking the problem of hostile replicators seriously.
> Our new government
> here would probably rather subsidize use of antibiotics by
> agribusiness than ban and regulate their (mis)use.

THe problem with this logic (or illogic) is that the vancomycin
resistant staphlococcus aureus bacteria evolved in Detroit, which has
been in the grip of the Democratic Party for who knows how many
decades, as is to a lesser degree, all of Michigan. This bacteria
evolved as a result of the liberal spread of needle exchange programs
increasing the number of addicts in Detroit and drug addicts mixing
vancomycin, obtained through socialist supported 'free clinics', into
their smack to make needle trading 'safer'.

Don't blame capitalism for this one, nor for the lack of available new
antibiotics. The government regulations which raise significant
barriers to entry for new drugs discourage investment in anti-biotics
which will only be used as last resorts. If socialized medicine were so
much better, we'd be seeing many new antibiotics coming out of european
labs. We aren't, are we???

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