Dictatorship of the non-proletariat: Liberals resist letting terminal patients try experimental cures

Complacent dupes? All for it

Why? Because the libertarian Koch brothers support it. So do the dying, and their families, but leftists want the FDA, and only the FDA, to decide what drugs the dying can have. Does this apply to marijuana? No, because, well, because!!

It's not really about the Koch brothers, it's about concentrating control of every citizen's life under the thumb of a government ruled by those who know what's best. A doped up crowd of somnolent tokers is acceptable, even preferable, but individual patients escaping the claws of a federal agency? Unthinkable!

Few Washington practices are creepier than the exploitation of the desperately ill for ideological ends. That hasn't stopped the sponsors of the egregious federal 'right to try' bill from scheduling the measure for a crucial House vote Tuesday.

The version to be voted on was formally introduced only Monday. (Pro tip: If a bill is sneaked onto the legislative calendar in the dead of night, it's probably not a good bill.) The sponsors imply that this is an improved version over the measure we wrote about in January. But experts who have examined the language, including Holly Fernandez Lynch of the University of Pennsylvania, regard the changes as modest and largely window dressing.

What hasn't changed is the goal of the bill's promoters, a right-wing gang that includes the Koch Brothers and the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, to use the bill to undermine the Food and Drug Administration. Their campaign is part of their program to undercut government regulations in the name of "liberty" and "choice" — the choice to get injured and killed by doctors and drug companies chasing profits, presumably.

The consequences could reach all patients who depend on the FDA to determine the safety and efficacy of drugs. "Are we prepared to abandon the FDA's gatekeeping role in favor of unfettered patient autonomy and market forces," Fernandez Lynch and Joffe asked, "risking precisely the problems that prompted Congress to grant the FDA its present authority?"

The Koch network doesn't want you to know about its ulterior motives. That's why two of its representatives, Nathan Nascimento and David Barnes, responded to my earlier column about the bill by utterly misrepresenting the piece and neatly avoiding mentioning the goal of cutting the FDA out of the drug approval loop.

It's about power, pure and simple.