Sunday, January 20, 2013
Leviathan II
Finally, you have to guess what the law is. There is so much “discretion” [3,4] afforded to regulatory agencies that the threat of fines and seizures over bizarre interpretations of the law by a Carmen Ortiz- style ambitious regulator is never far from your mind. Example [5]:
[Newsweek:] What exactly would constitute a “medical claim?” Would pointing people to medical research papers [qualify]?
[FDA]: It depends. There are rules as to how one can do that … Those rules are actually worked out pretty well, and they just would need to make sure they’re staying within the rules.
[Newsweek:] Are those rules on the Web?
[FDA]: I don’t know where the policy is. I would have to get it for you. It’s an agencywide policy. I would have to find it for you. And it won’t be that easy for people to follow it …
…
Look, finally, how they claim in an official court filing against family farms producing raw milk that you have "No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health" [12], where they approvingly cite the case of Cowan vs. US, where a terminal cancer patient was denied access to experimental medication, denied the right to opt-out of the FDA:
There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health.
Plaintiffs' assertion of a “fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families” is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish. In addition, courts have consistently refused to extrapolate a generalized right to “bodily and physical health” from the Supreme Court's narrow substantive due process precedents regarding abortion, intimate relations, and the refusal of lifesaving medical treatment.
…
I know it sounds surreal, but they are arguing here that you only control your own body with respect to abortion, intimate relations, and euthanasia. Everything else is controlled by the FDA, yea even unto your death from cancer.
The whole comment should be read, if only to read the extensive footnotes provided in the comment (those numbers in brackets). But it does show just how nanny-esque (and not to mention risk-averse) our government has become.
I'm telling you—Leviathan, peak government.
