Doesn the government have to regulate medical products?
No. Regulation of medical products is an attempt by the government to intervene in the free choices of individuals regarding what medical products they should consider “safe.” Since 1938 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has decided what medical goods may be sold in the United States. The FDA requires that every new medical product must establish its safety through often time consuming and unnecessary testing procedures. But does the FDA actually save lives? No. It is possible that the FDA may stop some dangerous drugs from coming on the market (assuming that they would have been bought any ways), but the number of lives lost due to delays of life-saving drugs far outweighs any lives that might have been saved. For example, the FDA kept beta blockers off the market for ten years, and estimates show that they could have saved about 10,000 lives a year. This means that the FDA is responsible for more deaths than the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.(!) In a free market, it would be i
