While we're at it can we get rid of the FDA so we can go back to a world filled with the "legitimate demand" for laudnum sold as a miracle cure for consumption, hysterics and gout?

Neoliberalism, by mixing ethical relativism with social Darwinism, allows for some rent seeking asshat to sleep well at night because they authorised a marketing campaign featuring a black woman.

Good job, Team Progress! All we need are just a few more empty words and a few more empty products... We're almost there!

If we have to use extreme analogies, I would rather use prostitution, because it is a service. Just like Dollar Shave Club, I think there is legitimate customer demand and it shouldn't be illegal. I also am not going to judge someone for partaking of it even though there exist easier or cheaper options for getting the product - sex. So that just brings us full circle to my original point, which appears to still stand.

I have gout, which is well controlled by not eating too much meat at a sitting and occasional "doses" of tart cherry juice. FDA would prefer I spend hundreds of dollars a year on drugs. I'm not sure what to recommend for your hysterics, however.

Would you elaborate on this? It leads me to think that the FDA is either recommending against you handling your gout as you see fit through diet, or strongly encouraging you to use the medication you'd rather not spend money on. The FDA may approve drugs for specific treatments, but that doesn't mean you have to use them, does it?

Admittedly some in the FDA are probably protecting the pharma industry.

Of course some naive person might demand some sort of smoking-gun admission of collusion or whatever...

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/28/49569455...