Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 6:01:06 PM
While reading
Best of the Web today, I was led to an
interesting obituary. Included were these paragraphs:
Mr. Baron died two weeks after he obtained an experimental
cancer-fighting treatment following a public plea by his son, Andrew,
who had called the drug Tysabri his "last-chance effort for life."
Mr. Baron received the Biogen Idec drug to treat his cancer last
month after pleas also were made by former president Bill Clinton,
cycling champion Lance Armstrong and Mr. Baron's wife, Lisa Blue, who
also is a lawyer at Baron & Budd.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized an oncologist at
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to give Mr. Baron the drug under a
rule for compassionate use. Tysabri is approved to treat multiple
sclerosis and Crohn's disease and is in the early stages of testing for
multiple myeloma.
What was not mentioned was the fate of those who might be benefited by these drugs but do not have ex-presidents, prominent lawyers and famous cyclists as friends.
This is what I discussed in both "
Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government" and "
Humor and Nightmare", the current form of government, where decisions are made by men and not based upon firm laws, leads to two types of individuals, those with special rights and those without. In this case, those who have influential friends and can bend the law, and those who d not and have to wait and see if they get the arbitrary compassion of a faceless bureaucrat.
Of course, in this case there is another question, why bother keeping this drug off the market? If it treats terminal cancer, does anyone who might be helped care if there are side effects? Of course, I argued in "
Medical Regulations" and "
Medical Regulation II" (and more recently in "
The Beam in Thine Own") for ending pharmaceutical regulation entirely, and this case just makes one more argument in favor of my position. But I will leave that argument for another day.
For now, let me just point out that, if you want to beat cancer, you better start making powerful friends now. Apparently the key to long life is political influence. (And that certainly won't change should we get saddled with ObamaCare. See "
Who Will Decide" and "
Medical Reform, An Overview".)