[maxharris]

Why is it OK to lump honest physicians, researchers and patients in with snake oil salesmen and their victims?

Why is it morally acceptable to have laws intended to help the people that don't care to tell the difference? Those laws come at the expense of those who do care, who take the trouble to figure things out.

Why shouldn't we live in a free society where the best within us can make a difference, and take humanity forward?

[roc]

> "Why shouldn't we live in a free society where the best within us can make a difference, and take humanity forward?"

Our free society lived with the alternative. And they collectively decided "the right to be defrauded is a false liberty, this is no the way forward, let us try another way."

And you know what? We've moved further forward, faster since these regulations were put into place. When people have trust that they're not being defrauded, they participate in the market to a far higher degree. When companies don't have to compete against charlatans, don't have to balance every dollar of research with a dollar of trying to educate the public about what is and what is not medically sound, they invest far more into their research efforts.

[Symmetry]

We lived with the alternative, but could we judge the two properly? When someone dies due to an unsafe drug that makes for a very compelling story. When someone dies from something that could potentially have been cured with a faster drug approval process, well, those deaths show up only in faceless statistical aggregates and society had already come to accept that sort of death as natural.

All the drugs that turned out to be dangerous over the last few decades and had to be withdrawn spring easily to mind, but how many people know about the deaths of the people whose heart attacks could have been prevented if the FDA had allowed the first beta blockers at the same time as they came into use in the rest of the developed world? Not many, despite the death toll of the later dwarfing all the former combined.

[wwwtyro]

"We've moved further forward, faster since these regulations were put into place."

Or perhaps we've moved further forward, faster in spite of these regulations being put into place.

Honestly, your position sounds like so much FUD to me, and I ultimately reject it because it boils down to this: "The US government has more of a right to determine what Heather Cimino's husband can do with his own body than he does, even should he die."

No thanks.

[maxharris]

Straw man.

I'm not arguing for the "right to be defrauded."

(Aside: fraud is a violation of an individual's rights, by definition. Your phrase steals the concept of "rights" - it uses "rights" while simultaneously attempting to deny or undermine the very same concept of "rights.")

We need a government, and strong laws to ensure that fraud and other instances of force [including theft, murder, etc.] are identified objectively adjudicated justly, after it has been shown that someone's rights have been violated.

We shouldn't treat anyone - physicians, patients, businesses, etc. - as guilty before they've acted. That's what regulations do: they are based on the assumption that people are guilty, and that need to be stopped before they act.

I'm for treating everyone as innocent until specifically proven guilty. Why aren't you?

[roc]

Representing that you have a potential cure or treatment when you have, by definition, no scientifically sound reason to believe that's correct isn't fraud? (If they had such a reason, they'd have no trouble getting clearance for human trials. You can argue about whether the current bar for evidence is too high, but that's distinct from arguing there should be no bar at all.)

> "We shouldn't treat anyone - physicians, patients, businesses, etc. - as guilty before they've acted. That's what regulations do"

No, they don't. They regulate activities, not people. They're distinct from laws only inasmuch as we recognize that while not just everyone should be allowed to do a thing (say, drive on public roads) some people should be allowed to do those things. So we don't outlaw those activities, we regulate who is and is not allowed to do those things.

Do you believe a law against murder is equivalent to treating everyone as a murderer before they've acted? How is a regulation over who can publicly make medical claims so different? If the law simply said "no-one can make medical claims", the way no-one can yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, would that be pre-judging?

[Turing_Machine]

I do not recognize "the collective's" right to make this decision for me.

[roc]

And yet by participating in this society you are directly supporting their ability to make such decisions, whether they side with or against you on a given issue.

If you actively pursue one of the many methods available to effect change, you can only do so via the same channels that allowed others to set up the status quo. Even securing a constitutional amendment against such laws would just underscore the right and ability of others to pursue their own amendment to overturn yours.

The only way to secure your victory would be to end representative democracy. And of course no other method of government would deliver a guarantee to respect your freedom to make such decisions free from their meddling.

So all that's left is no government.

[Turing_Machine]

"The only way to secure your victory would be to end representative democracy."

That would be why I prefer a constitutional republic to a democracy.

Edit: to be more specific, a constitutional republic that pays actual attention to the Tenth Amendment.

[Turing_Machine]

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Do you see anything in the Constitution that grants the federal government the right to tell me what medications I choose to take?

I don't.

[roc]

The Constitution is a living document that provides the legal framework for testing the constitutionality of laws and a method for its amendment. It explicitly grants society, via representative government, the right to interpret, change and extend the Government's power.

To reject the power of society to, by following constitutionally-specified methods, give government this power is to reject self-government.

[Retric]

Why is it OK to lump honest physicians, researchers and patients in with snake oil salesmen and their victims?

The best snake oil salesmen believe in their products. There are already exceptions for allowing people to take highly experimental procedures when there likely to die without them. However, there are plenty of cases where highly trained well meaning doctors caused massive suffering without benefit to their direct patents.

As a recent example of fringe medicine, a few athletes have injected themselves with stem cells. Not to mention the modern version of doping which often involves substances that are known to be harmful or medicine has little idea what the long term effects are.

[maxharris]

So we should treat every physician, researcher and patient as guilty, incorrect or foolish until proven innocent, correct or wise?

However, there are plenty of cases where highly trained well meaning doctors caused massive suffering without benefit to their direct patents.

No one is omniscient. The ideal in medicine can't be something impossible (i.e., medicine that cures all ills and everyone, and never has any risks or side effects). No one knows how to do that (now and for the foreseeable future), and we shouldn't deny people the best chance they have at life to chase an impossibility.

[Retric]

So we should treat ... researcher... as guilty, incorrect or foolish until proven innocent, correct or wise?

Yes, that's the point of peer review.

[maxharris]

Peer review is just another thing that helps individuals decide scientific matters for themselves.

The implicit idea behind peer review can be summed up like this: "This is what I think about this work. (I have credentials X, Y, and Z, and I've published this stuff you many have heard of.) What I have to say is just another thing for you to consider. Take it or leave it."

[Retric]

It's more than that as it's vary possible for things to fail peer review and or be edited and resubmitted. But, also in some ways less as you as a reader don't know who did the peer review.