Re: Enough!

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Sat, 12 Sep 1998 17:05:41 -0500


Robert sez:

> I'm kind of partial to the FDA, myself.

Oh, sure, they're one of my favorite federal "services." They're why it
takes years to get new drugs to market, why our pharmcos are
competitively crippled in the long term, why new pharmaceutical startups
are prohibitively difficult to fund, why AIDS patients have to jump
through hoops to get treatments that are considered standard practice in
other countries, while *at the same time* schoolchildren eat tons of
suspect meat a year, why research into longevity and cryopreservation
has been hobbled domestically, why my girlf^h^h^h^h SOMEBODY I KNOW has
to order the only birthcontrol pills she can tolerate from out of the
country, and why I can no longer either buy domestically or import for
personal use the only drug that ever proved effective and side-effect
free for my insomnia. (Rohypnol, taken in very small amounts, by the
way --- the "date rape drug." Forget that, that compound helped me get
the best regular sleep --- maybe the only *good regular sleep* I've had
in my adult life --- for about three months before they slapped it on
schedule. No grogginess, no hangover, no weird scary dreams like Xanax
and Clonopin and other benzodiazapenes, no addictive "nag," no problems
with short-term memory, not "total stuporific unconsciousness," nothing
but restful, good, moderately deep sleep. It was a prescription drug,
for crissakes! Why not just watch it closely like other "potentially
dangerous" prescription drugs?!?) Oh, I love the FDA. Everything they
are supposed to do, they either don't do or screw up regularly or make
more expensive.

John sez:

> We just have a VIRUS called Socialism.

Actually, it's worse than just that. We've got a virus called
socialism, a neurological condition called "the religious right," a
general metabolic problem called "governmental paternalism," and an
autoimmune disorder called "this massive body of ridiculous case law."

jb