We lived with the alternative, but could we judge the two properly? When someone dies due to an unsafe drug that makes for a very compelling story. When someone dies from something that could potentially have been cured with a faster drug approval process, well, those deaths show up only in faceless statistical aggregates and society had already come to accept that sort of death as natural.

All the drugs that turned out to be dangerous over the last few decades and had to be withdrawn spring easily to mind, but how many people know about the deaths of the people whose heart attacks could have been prevented if the FDA had allowed the first beta blockers at the same time as they came into use in the rest of the developed world? Not many, despite the death toll of the later dwarfing all the former combined.

"We've moved further forward, faster since these regulations were put into place."

Or perhaps we've moved further forward, faster in spite of these regulations being put into place.

Honestly, your position sounds like so much FUD to me, and I ultimately reject it because it boils down to this: "The US government has more of a right to determine what Heather Cimino's husband can do with his own body than he does, even should he die."

No thanks.

Straw man.

I'm not arguing for the "right to be defrauded."

(Aside: fraud is a violation of an individual's rights, by definition. Your phrase steals the concept of "rights" - it uses "rights" while simultaneously attempting to deny or undermine the very same concept of "rights.")

We need a government, and strong laws to ensure that fraud and other instances of force [including theft, murder, etc.] are identified objectively adjudicated justly, after it has been shown that someone's rights have been violated.

We shouldn't treat anyone - physicians, patients, businesses, etc. - as guilty before they've acted. That's what regulations do: they are based on the assumption that people are guilty, and that need to be stopped before they act.

I'm for treating everyone as innocent until specifically proven guilty. Why aren't you?

Representing that you have a potential cure or treatment when you have, by definition, no scientifically sound reason to believe that's correct isn't fraud? (If they had such a reason, they'd have no trouble getting clearance for human trials. You can argue about whether the current bar for evidence is too high, but that's distinct from arguing there should be no bar at all.)

> "We shouldn't treat anyone - physicians, patients, businesses, etc. - as guilty before they've acted. That's what regulations do"

No, they don't. They regulate activities, not people. They're distinct from laws only inasmuch as we recognize that while not just everyone should be allowed to do a thing (say, drive on public roads) some people should be allowed to do those things. So we don't outlaw those activities, we regulate who is and is not allowed to do those things.

Do you believe a law against murder is equivalent to treating everyone as a murderer before they've acted? How is a regulation over who can publicly make medical claims so different? If the law simply said "no-one can make medical claims", the way no-one can yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, would that be pre-judging?

I do not recognize "the collective's" right to make this decision for me.

And yet by participating in this society you are directly supporting their ability to make such decisions, whether they side with or against you on a given issue.

If you actively pursue one of the many methods available to effect change, you can only do so via the same channels that allowed others to set up the status quo. Even securing a constitutional amendment against such laws would just underscore the right and ability of others to pursue their own amendment to overturn yours.

The only way to secure your victory would be to end representative democracy. And of course no other method of government would deliver a guarantee to respect your freedom to make such decisions free from their meddling.

So all that's left is no government.

"The only way to secure your victory would be to end representative democracy."

That would be why I prefer a constitutional republic to a democracy.

Edit: to be more specific, a constitutional republic that pays actual attention to the Tenth Amendment.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Do you see anything in the Constitution that grants the federal government the right to tell me what medications I choose to take?

I don't.

The Constitution is a living document that provides the legal framework for testing the constitutionality of laws and a method for its amendment. It explicitly grants society, via representative government, the right to interpret, change and extend the Government's power.

To reject the power of society to, by following constitutionally-specified methods, give government this power is to reject self-government.