Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

Abstract

The panel decision in Abigail Alliance, which found a constitutional right to use certain medicines that have not received Food and Drug Administration approval, may not survive further review, but it already stands as an important signpost on the road to further deregulation of the drug market. This trend mirrors the evolution of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) industry which is remarkably unregulated although it raises numerous ethical and consumer protection issues. These developments share an obvious libertarian underpinning, but in both cases it is an odd sort of libertarianism, because proponents of unmediated access to drugs and IVF also favor broad government funding of research in those areas, a type of state intervention that departs dramatically from libertarian norms. This sort of funded libertarianism is an unstable policy approach that is unlikely to survive.

Publication Citation

18 Stan. L & Pol'y Rev. 21-33 (2007)

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