The intelligencia in the media can decide what to emphasize, what to downplay and what to ignore entirely when it comes to race. These may be individual choices, rather than a conspiracy, but individual choices growing out of a common vision of the world can produce results all too similar to what is produced by centralized censorship or propaganda. —Thomas Sowell
The FDA limits the information that drug companies can share with doctors and consumers. As many as 100,000 Americans died needlessly from heart disease each year that aspirin makers couldn’t advertise aspirin’s role in its prevention. —Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, Healing Our World
We pay 5 times as much for drugs than we should. Because the FDA is blamed when drugs affect some people adversely, the agency drags out the approval process. Drug development time and cost has increased greatly since the early 1960s without any improvement in either efficacy or safety. The true cost, however, is measured in lives, as tens of thousands of people die waiting for the FDA to approve breakthrough drugs. —Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, Healing Our World
The chemotherapy almost killed Thomas. The Navarros refused further treatments, only to find that the FDA wouldn’t permit Thomas to receive the gentler experimental treatment unless he had radiation too. In frustration, the Navarros went to Congress, as other patients have done, to plead for permission to use new drugs not yet approved by the FDA. After a year and a half of fighting, when Thomas was expected to live for only two more weeks, the FDA finally permitted him to have a “compassionate use” exemption.
By that time, Thomas had developed new tumors, called leptomeningial-sarcoma, from his initial chemotherapy. Nevertheless, the experimental treatment kept Thomas going for several more months. How much longer might Thomas have lived if we had honored his parents’ choice in the earlier stages of his disease?
—Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, Healing Our World
A young drug dealer once asked for a job on a public housing project in San Francisco. He approached Chris Albert, president of Willie Electric Company, hoping to get out of drugs and into legitimate work.
Unfortunately, because of the high wages dictated by the minimum wage law, the contractor couldn’t afford to take a chance on an unskilled man with no job record. The young man came back two days later and begged to be employed at a lower wage. “I won’t tell the law,” he promised.
“I want to make a better life for me and for my mom, and for my little sisters and brothers.” Unwilling to risk legal problems, the contractor reluctantly refused.
Two days later the young man was shot and killed. Maybe he’d be alive today if the minimum wage laws had not prevented him from working instead of being on the streets.
—Mary Ruwart, Healing Our World
Those whose libertarianism is based on utilitarianism are oftentimes willing to sacrifice liberty in a doomed attempt to achieve an important goal. In contrast, those with a moral commitment to liberty are unlikely to betray liberty by endorsing government force. —Ron Paul
We defer to authority figures because they are supposed to know more than we do. If a mistake is made, it’s easy to lay the blame at their feet. Ultimately, however, we are responsible for choosing the authority figure we defer to. Choosing to defer to one who urges aggression against others still puts the responsibility on us. —Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, Healing Our World
Nobody in the drug industry is going to say anything because if they do the FDA could punish them by dragging their feet on their approvals, which could destroy a company, and it has destroyed many. So no one is going to speak out. —Dr. Mary J. Ruwart
Let us not be mere spectators. With our pens, with our voices, with our contributions to our great cause let us give history a push in the direction of freedom. —Lew Rockwell
Those of us who homeschooled our kids prior to the school shutdowns were quick to point out that pandemic homeschooling was nothing like the real thing. Despite this inauspicious introduction to homeschooling, millions of parents and students discovered that learning without schooling is not only possible but preferable. —Kerry McDonald
