FDA regulations can prove deadly.

• Position: BIG GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO BUTT OUT - Brief article

The Supreme Court recently considered a petition to hear the case of Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach. The Abigail Alliance is challenging a lower court's ruling which found that terminally ill patients do not have a right to take promising medicines that have yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

"Barring individuals from choosing what medicines to take is immoral and destructive," responds Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, Irvine, Calif. "The decision about what drugs to put in one's body rightfully belongs to the individual, not to FDA bureaucrats. To deny individuals this right is to impose a death sentence on those who, in the face of certain death, would rationally choose to accept the risks of an experimental treatment, but are barred from doing so until the urgently needed drug completes the FDA's onerous, years-long approval process. Indeed, this case was initiated by a...