An Immodest Proposal

Earlier this month, a columnist for the student newspaper at my university wrote a piece about how much more harm the FDA does than it prevents. All that boggling bureaucracy, he asserted, kills people. Drugs that could save lives take too long to reach the populace. The pharmaceutical companies lose billions to those inane regulations. If only the government took its fingers out of the food and drug pies, health care would be affordable to all, the quality of patient care would skyrocket, and unicorns would dance with the leprechauns at the end of the free market rainbow.

I may sound like I'm being sarcastic, but actually I agree with this columnist 100%. As a biology major and sometimes self-appointed science expert, I have always been a staunch adherent to the principles of natural selection. Dismantling the FDA would ultimately lead to a stronger, smarter, and more resilient human species.

Here's how it works. The FDA currently forces all those pesky tests and standards on the packaged food and pharmaceutical companies. If we take quality assurance out at the knees, the factories could churn out more foods and medicines more quickly. Those products will probably have higher levels of contaminants. Now, people with weak immune systems have had their lives artificially lengthened by modern medicine. When they eat those uninspected fruit snacks, the pathogens will test their mettle. If they survive, they will be deemed worthy of producing the next generation of humans. If not, their genes were worthless anyway.

Also, when new products enter the market, they won't have to go through all those levels of research, modeling, animal testing, clinical trials, blah blah blah. Cancer patients won't have to wait years for an experimental drug to be approved, but can just jump head-first into a vat of magic potions if someone has the inkling it will make their ailments disappear.

Chances are, that magic potion is a bunch of baloney and will kill them faster. Now, you soft-hearted types might think this is a bad thing. But honestly, cancer is just the natural order of things. It is what people in less enlightened eras deemed "death by old age"...you live, your telomeres deteriorate, you mutate, and you die. A lot of cancers have some component of genetic predisposition--hence why the life insurance reapers salesman make you indicate your family history on those forms. Imagine if all those people who contracted cancers just died straightaway. We wouldn't have to waste billions in NSF grants trying to find cures. Families wouldn't have to give hospitals their life savings for treatments. All that money could go towards extending the reach of human excellence...like founding colonies on Mars and building more gadgets that can make phone calls AND play music. Plus, all those little kids with leukemia wouldn't live to pass on their diseased heritage to future generations.

The same concept applies to old people. They can't work or reproduce, which makes them societal dead-weight. Younger people can Google up the risks of certain drugs or stories of people who became ill after eating imported spinach. But old people don't have Internet access. Their decreased mental capacity and tiny bank accounts will lead them to just purchase the cheapest product on the market. Without the FDA, these products will most likely be the most dangerous, and will pick off the dead-weight for us. It's like antelope leaving the old sick ones behind while they flee from lions. Old people buy medicine more often, so they would die first and let the rest of us know which bottles to avoid.

The American public has been brainwashed into believing that the FDA exists for the common good. Fools. The FDA is an outmoded institution that stands in the way of human progress. Evolution only occurs if the unfit die early. If we want to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, we need to pare down the number of individuals who would be susceptible to the Zombie virus. We need to make sure the majority are people who do not need medicine, who can digest everything, and who have the smarts to build and operate Zombie-warding technologies. The first step is to abolish the FDA. Then we can tackle the hospital system, emergency services, and law enforcement. Eventually, it will just be us against the wolves, and the future of humanity will be decided by the survival of the fittest.