According to the Declaration of Independence, all individuals are endowed with certain unalienable rights, namely the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, according to the Federal Death Agency (FDA), you need its permission to live.
Consider: you are suffering from a terminal disease and all treatments have failed. Your doctor mentions a new drug that might work in your case. But the drug hasn’t been approved by the FDA. Before you can try the drug, you must get the FDA’s permission. You must get the FDA’s permission to live.
This may seem like hyperbole, but on March 28 the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate, two malaria drugs that some think show promise in curing COVID-19. Two former FDA commissioners decried the ruling. Scott Gottlieb, who was commissioner until last year, said
If the drug combo is working its effect is probably subtle enough that only rigorous and large-scale trials will tease it out.
And, during the years that such trials take, tens of thousands (or many more) could die. The fact is, if hundreds of thousands of patients takes the drugs, a large-scale trial will be taking place.
Margaret Hamburg, commissioner during most of Obama’s tenure, concurred:
I understand the desire to find hope, but we need more evidence than is currently available before we encourage widespread use. Making the drugs available in a more widespread way might actually interfere with the ability to get the data that we need.
Hamburg would have us believe that the only way to get data is for the government to control every aspect of testing a drug. Apparently, if hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 patients willingly take the drug, it will be impossible to determine the results.
Gottlieb and Hamburg want the government to decide what individuals may legally ingest, even if they are dying. Unlike Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, Gottlieb and Hamburg do not think that individuals have an unalienable right to their own life. Gottlieb and Hamburg think that we should obtain their permission to live.