Top 15 Mary Ruwart Quotes

How many innovative, potentially lifesaving drugs never make it to the marketplace because of the added costs in time and money imposed by the [Kefauver-Harris] Amendments? No one knows for sure, but the studies that have been done imply that we’ve lost about 80% of the innovations that we would have had in the absence of he Amendments.

When the AIDS epidemic began, the US pharmacist had little to offer its unfortunate victims. Consequently, AIDS patients began bringing in antiviral drugs or immune stimulants that were approved in other nations, such as ribavirin and Isoprinosine. It might have made sense to approve those drugs on the basis of data from other countries, but back then the FDA insisted on considering only studies done in the United States.

Even when the FDA agrees to expanded access, pharmaceutical companies are often reluctant to give terminal patients a drug that is still in development. If patients die from organ failure related to their disease, the FDA may require additional studies from the manufacturer to make sure that the death was not hurried along by the drug. Naturally, the extra studies increase the development timeline and overall cost.

Congress enacted the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments to the 1938 Food and Drug Act… What the Amendments actually did was increase the time it takes for a new drug to move from the lab bench to the marketplace: a change from 4 years to 14 years over the next few decades. Terminally ill patients who couldn’t live with the delay turned to the black market to get access to potential cures. Every year, the cost of satisfying the FDA have soared, resulting to ever-increasing prices at the pharmacy. More than half of our potential innovations have never made it to patients because companies realized they couldn’t recoup their investments under the new regulations.

As children, we learned that if no one hits first, no fight is possible. Therefore, refraining from ‘first-strike’ force, theft, or fraud, is the first step in creating peace.

When we, as individuals, take from our neighbors what they won’t voluntarily give—at gunpoint, if necessary—we call it theft. When majorities take from minorities what they won’t voluntarily give—at gunpoint, if necessary—we call it taxation.

One way to eliminate the Federal Communications Commission would be to auction off all of the frequencies and allow them to be bought and sold like other property. Trespass by other stations would be handled just like trespass on land. Bandwidths useful for new applications could be ‘homesteaded’ just as land once was.

In a libertarian society, big business wouldn’t be so big, since they couldn’t destroy their competition through government regulation. Without government control of the airways, more radio and television stations would be available and could not be shut down on political whim.

‘Mandatory’ means forced—at gunpoint, if necessary. When we force people to do things, for their own good or the good of others, we violate their right of self-determination. Libertarians respect the rights of others to choose their own path—that’s what liberty is all about. If community service is such a good deal, we should have no trouble persuading people to do it voluntarily. If we can’t convince others that our way is best, maybe we should humbly consider the possibility that it isn’t.

An armed society is a polite society, and the not-so-wild West was rather peaceful, in spite of Hollywood’s violent portrayal. As a legacy, in the rural West where every household still has firearms, crime is less than in eastern cities.

By the late 1970s, armed citizens were killing more criminals in self-defense than the police. Many more would-be attackers and robbers are deterred from their crime when their intended victim simply brandishes a firearm.

When tariffs are eliminated, consumers pay less for foreign goods. They therefore have more money to spend on other things. Their spending creates more new jobs than those that are lost.

Libertarians support free trade, but it doesn’t take the five hundred plus pages of the NAFTA agreement to say ‘no more restrictions between us.’

Libertarians believe that no one should be forced to support another. If a woman has chosen to gift a fetus with life, it does not necessarily follow that she is obligated to continue to support it with her body, especially if that support threatens the woman’s life. A woman’s body is her property, to do with as she wishes.

Libertarian societies also create immense wealth primarily because the poor are not excluded from the labor market. Studies show that the closer a country is to the libertarian ideal, the more even is its distribution of wealth.