I am fully aware that the Internet was given birth by the government and the defense industry. So? I don't object to a Defense Department. Or NASA, and I also sort of like Tang.

And btw, it is not at all obvious that the FDA saves more lives than it takes, as has been written about extensively. (I'm too lazy to go gather links right now, but that is true.) But in any event, the state has NO BUSINESS saving me against my will. If it wants to refuse a seal of approval on a drug, fine. But my liberty to choose my own medicine and assume risks as I see fit is inherently valuable, and not purchased by a paternalistic intent to "save" me.

As for your notion that the FDA plays only a "tertiary" role in the drug war, the mind boggles. The war on drugs collapses without the prescription drug system.

Does your right to do what you want to yourself medically preclude my right to remain healthy? At what point is libertarianism just an excuse for ignorance and selfishness?

Did you read Glenn's post a few weeks back attacking the Prescription Drug system? I did -- and I liked it so well I added it as an update to a post I had just written, which I will largely reproduce in whole since link embeds do not work here. That should make my position clear. Please take particular note that I, and Glenn, factor communicable diseases into our positions:

Today, Rick Perlstein is ridiculing Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan for aspiring to contract the size of the federal government, and holding up contaminated foods as a reason to mock “E. coli Conservatives.” Sayeth the breathless Perlstein:

George Bush’s Food and Drug Administration—and our other major food-inspection arm, the U.S. Department of Agriculture—are Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan’s noble words made flesh. But don’t let your family get too close to the flesh. They might get sick and die.

Now I ask you, how may libertarians here oppose The Pure Food and Drug Act (for purposes of accurate labeling and inspections for contaminants, as opposed to criminalizing/prohibiting substances) or The Meat Inspection Act, in principle regardless of any possible quibbles over execution? As I recall Reagan’s (broken) pledge, it was to abolish the Department of Education — which would have spared us “No Child Left behind.” So, contaminated edibles (and Bush Administration incompetence in that regard) has nothing to do with Goldwater/Reagan “noble words made flesh.”

I don’t oppose safety inspections on food, because the potential harm is larger than tort actions could reasonably compensate for. Nor do I oppose truth in labeling — fraud is Not Good. Opposition to Leviathan at the federal level is not about the freedom to poison children’s peanut butter, or to sell them tuna that is actually horse meat.

Duh.

Here, Mr., Perlstein. This is how Big Brother almost kills people [link to recent story about entire family that almost died before FDA approved a milk-thistle based antidote for poisonous mushrooms approved in Germany but not here to enter country] — in this case the FDA is the culprit. In fact, the FDA has killed people, by not expeditiously approving drugs or procedures, nor letting people assume the risk of medical means to treat terminal conditions before approval. (Commenters please send me links to support for that fact and I’ll update with it.) Thus we see Progressives’ noble word made dead human flesh, ‘n all.

Funny how that “my body, my choice” thing goes out the window when the Progressives’ Great and Good Government” is “protecting” me.

******

Update:

Glenn Greenwald — who is my kind of “progressive” — gets it, casting the issue in terms of physicians rather than the FDA who controls them:

…it seems absolutely unjustifiable for the government to prevent adult citizens from deciding for themselves which pharmaceutical products they want to use. Put another way, it seems unfathomable that competent adults are first required to obtain the “permission” of a doctor before being “allowed” to obtain and consume the medications they think they need — and that they are committing crimes if they do not first obtain that permission (or, worse, if they try to obtain that permission and are unable to do so)…

And he poses this hypothetical question to a physician:

I come into your office (I’m a mentally competent adult — at least in our hypothetical) and tell you that I want to take a Schedule II drug (or Schedule III or IV) for Medical Problem X (or even just for garden-variety insomnia, depression, or anxiety). You tell me that I shouldn’t, that there is a high risk of addiction, that the problem doesn’t warrant that treatment. I tell you that, after listening carefully to everything you have said, I disagree with you and I want to take it anyway.

Why should your judgment prevail over mine for what I take? Why, as a competent adult, should I need your permission before I can take the substance I decide is best for me?

Further, he makes the very point I do about excepting antibiotics, my emphasis:

What is the difference between the attorney-client and doctor-patient relationship, where the former is purely advisory but the latter becomes parental? And other than consumption of medicine which can actually affect the public health (such as excessive consumption of antibiotics), why should an adult be deemed a criminal for using a particular medicine all because a doctor (for whatever reasons, including self-interest) will not give permission?