Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

August 9, 2007

The US Court of Appeals for Washington, DC has ruled that the Food and Drug Administration can deny experimental drugs to people suffering from terminal illness. The ruling is based on the assumption that rights are government artifacts.

In her dissenting opinion, Judge Judith W. Rogers pointed out that while federal courts protect abortion and various forms of deviant sexual behavior as rights, ?the right to try to save one's life is left out in the cold....?

The federal court insists that it is the federal government, not the afflicted individual, that has the authority to calculate the risks and potential benefits of new medical treatments. Abandoning this paternalistic premise, warned the court, ?would undermine much of the modern administrative state....?

By this reckoning, the federal government's all-encompassing power to regulate our lives must be preserved, even if doing so consigns people to agonizing deaths that could be prevented through the use of experimental drugs.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.