Saturday, February 5, 2011

Hsieh PJM OpEd: "America's Other Drug Problem"

The February 5, 2011 PajamasMedia published my latest OpEd, "America's Other Drug Problem".

My theme is that the current critical shortage of many life-saving legal drugs should be solved not by yet another new government program (as the Obama Administration is planning), but by getting government out of the way.

Here is the introduction:
America has a serious drug problem, but it's not one most Americans have heard of. The problem is not illegal drugs, but rather a critical shortage of many life-saving legal drugs. And the federal government is about to make things worse.

During the past year, medical professionals have received alarming reports about critical shortages of important drugs. These drugs aren't the common over-the-counter medications that consumers purchase in their local drugstores. Rather, the shortages are in various injectable drugs typically administered to seriously ill patients in hospitals...
(Read the full text of "America's Other Drug Problem".)

For this piece, I drew heavily on (and linked to) the excellent article by Stella Daily Zawistoski in the Fall 2008 issue of The Objective Standard on "How the FDA Violates Rights and Hinders Health". If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading her more detailed article.

Update: Thank you, Instapundit, for the link!