TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Sunday, November 6, 2011

FDA Bans Life-Saving Asthma Medications to Protect Ozone

Posted by Joshua Lipana at 10:31 pm ET

FDAThe FDA will force U.S. pharmaceutical companies to phase out over-the-counter (OTC) inhalers used by people with Asthma. The ban was “justified” on the premise that it will protect the ozone layer.

The proper purpose of government, however, is not to protect the ozone, but to protect individual rights—including the rights of drug producers and consumers to act on their judgment in support of their lives. If there were sufficient evidence that aerosol was destroying the ozone and thus a threat to human life, then free markets and consequent technology would address the problem. (Those who doubt that people would address such problems without government coercion are stuck with the contradiction that the government consists of people.)

OTC inhalers, like countless other drugs, are produced, marketed, and purchased because they enhance or save human lives. The fact that there are “green” alternatives is irrelevant. Morally, individuals have a right to choose what they think is best for themselves. Economically, the green alternatives are more expensive, and, for many people, less effective. Further these alternatives require prescriptions—and thus visits to doctors and all the time and expenses involved therein.

This ban is a patent violation of individual rights. Americans who care about liberty must denounce it and demand its reversal.

Related:

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Posted in: Environmentalism, Health Care

Comments are welcome so long as they are civil.
  • http://www.mikeseyes.blogspot.com/ Mike N

    More evidence of the anti life nature of the morality of human sacrifice. This also proves that altruism is about sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, sacrifice as a way of life. Suffering for the sake of suffering. Today they came for the asthmatics, tomorrow, the rest of us.

  • Anonymous

    I’m not at all sure what a reversal would require. The FDA  reports that this is part of an international agreement, specifically the Montreal Protocols. The abject tyranny of international environmentalism complicates local governance. Although this isn’t a treaty, the US should refuse as a matter of policy to abrogate individual liberties for the sake of international “cooperation,” particularly when those agreements entail violations of a government’s proper function.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1559168671 Yvonne Ballard

    So how long will it be before a lot of the medications we take by mouth are banned because they are being found in high quantities in the water table from human waste water that makes it to our lakes and oceans that in return expose the fishes and aquatic creatures to these medications that will harm them..just how long will that be?