Manufacturer-Consumer Darwinism

I often get into debates with others over the merits of a libertarian society. One of the areas of most adamant disagreement (due to its extreme importance to me) is often that over drugs, whether they be for recreational or medicinal purposes. I stand wholeheartedly behind the idea that people should have the right to obtain and ingest whichever substances they choose, with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) assuming an informational and certifying function but not a choice-limiting one. Manufacturers of substances could apply to the FDA to have their products certified in exchange for legal protection from harm caused by their products. Many people question the sense of allowing people to experiment with substances whose safety and/or efficacy were not proven to some arbitrary standard. For me, the philosophy of freedom is reason enough to allow this. However, for those looking for a more communal reason, let me offer the following:

Whenever a risk-tolerant person decides to consume a new substance, the result of this personal experiment gives society as a whole a piece of knowledge on the effect of this compound on the human body. If serious side effects occur, or even death, the experimenter is unlikely (or even unable) to recommend the substance to other experimenters. As a result, only drugs whose perceived benefit outweighs their perceived risk for a significant number of people are likely to attract a substantial following of users. Those compounds that are truly life-enhancing are likely to stay around, even if their greatest utility is for conditions the chemists inventing them were unaware of. Of course there will be "snake-oil salesmen" who will tout useless or even dangerous products to make money, but consumers existing in such a world will know that in the absence of the seal of FDA certification or a licensed doctor's assertion (I still support the existence of licensed doctors, as I do FDA certification--neither however limiting peoples' right to self-medicate if desired), such information must be taken with a grain of salt.

The people who take uncertified drugs, the equivalent of unapproved ones today, are those who either believe strongly in their ability to enhance some aspect of life (due to persoanl scientific knowledge, consultation with experts, or simply personal opinion), or who choose to take a chance due to lack of other options or personal lack of concern for safety, or some combination of these. This system will inevitably lead to more serious adverse effects and deaths as people are able to make more mistakes. However, it also increases the chance that a genuinely good idea will become apparent. Pharmaceutical companies pour billions of dollars into research and development, in an attempt to discover new chemical entities with useful biological activities. Financial resources and time are not endless, however, and the risk is always there that research into the next wonder drug will be stalled in the early stages of development due to corporate prioritizing. If some individual sees promise in this drug and manufactures it, allowing other individuals to experiment with its use, this is a low-cost alternative route to realization of the compound's beneficial potential. As long as the users consent and are aware of the risk, the worst that can happen is that someone dies as a result of his or her own free will. The best is that the substance will achieve notoriety among a small set of the population for its benefit, and this will attract those businesses with the means to perform the necessary testing for the less experimental members of society to use it.

This situation, in which there is an increase in death or a decrease in fitness among certain members of a population, but the chance of discovering a novel solution to a problem is simulataneously increased, is reminiscent of Darwinian natural selection. As the mutation rate of an organism's genome increases, the number of organisms with deleterious mutations increases, but so does the adaptability to a threat. It is for this reason that the DNA replication machinery of many viruses such as HIV is much more error prone than that of cellular organisms. Of course, organisms don't choose to have their survival determined by their genes. Increasing the number of consenting "human guinea pigs" by allowing people to self-medicate leads to a kind of rapid selection in which potential pharmceuticals (or even recreational drugs) are "selected for" without dramatic corporate spending. Of course, this does not diminish or negate the role of rational scientific discovery in developing new drugs, making the search random. Not all good ideas, however, can simultaneously be investigated by pharmaceutical companies that have the time and the means to conduct the type of testing required by the FDA.

One could also envision situations, a bit more futuristic in nature, in which potential genetic enhancements are subject to true natural selection. Those who opt to have their genomes altered will experience a corresponding increase or decrease in health and/or happiness due to the change, and those mutations that have drastic deleterious effects alone or in combination may even kill the individuals who induce them. All of this provides information that can be used by others to make more informed choices. Of course, in all of this individual variation must be taken into account, and there is no substitute for a rigorous statistical analysis to support individuals' claims of success. The number of such statistical analyses that need to be done, however, is reduced if prior human experimentation has raised some probable conclusions to test. Also, certain drugs, including recreational ones, may be beneficial for a small proportion of the population and detrimental to others, a scenario that in a statistical test may seem equivalent to no effect, but is very different in terms of implications for treatment.