Christina’s Common Sense

If I told you that researchers in Silicon Valley have found bugs that poop crude oil, you’d probably think I was quoting some bad Saturday morning filler on the Sci-Fi Channel. What’s next, you wonder? “Soylent Green is people!” (it is, by the way)?

I’m not quoting bad Saturday morning filler on the Sci-Fi Channel for two reasons. First, anyone up early enough on a Saturday to actually catch it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Second, it’s not bad Saturday morning filler on the Sci-Fi channel. It’s real.

Yep, it is. Some of these researchers have found that if genetically altered bugs eat agricultural waste (ie, wood chips), they excrete oil. Black gold. Texas tea. The same stuff Jed Clampett ran across while shooting at some food.

Of course, this is far from becoming the next big thing. There are all sorts of things that need to be considered, figured, and financed before crude oil in the form of bug poop could become the savior of the oil market. But still, it’s a promising solution—and one devised without one iota of government intervention. Advocates of a free market solution to our energy prices have one more feather in their cap.

It seems like there’s an advocacy group for everything these days. Everything from disability to skin color runs to the government for money and advocacy. The blind are no different. Yesterday, a DC appeals court ruled that the government must redo paper currency so that blind people can identify what denomination of bill they are holding.

I know I’m going to come across as heartless and cruel here, but are blind people starving to death because they can’t figure out what bill they need to pay for their lunch? I sincerely doubt it. They’ve obviously figured something out. Beyond that, how much is this going to cost? I don’t have an exact figure, but it can’t be cheap. Can blind people not think of any way to design their own system for categorizing bills?

I’m sure they can. But we don’t live in a society where we do things ourselves anymore. We live in a society where we run to the government and hold the rest of the country hostage when things don’t go our way. The country is now going to have to spend billions of dollars to take care of something that can be taken care of without government help.

Loss of sight is a terrible thing to live with. But so’s a learning disability. I happen to have the latter. There are certain limitations that come with it. One of these is that I will probably never be able to balance my own checkbook. That stinks! But I’m not going to go to my bank and demand that they revamp their checkbook so my life can be easier. I use a calculator, or ask my parents for help. This is part of having my particular disability, and I’ve managed it without help from Uncle Sam. Is it impossible that blind people might be able to do the same?

I blogged the other day about how government-run healthcare is an unmitigated disaster for Europe and Canada, and it will be for us too. However, that’s not to say our current system isn’t also a disaster—it is. Would we have a call for socialized medicine—excuse me, universal healthcare—if our current system was doing everything right?

When you ask “What’s the problem with American healthcare?” The response will doubtless be, “Not enough people are insured.” According to the 2005 US Census, about 15% of the American public does not have health insurance. That means about 85 %—8-9 out of 10 people—do have health insurance. And really, that’s a good percentage. To listen to the Democrats this year, you’d think 85% of the American public wasn’t covered.

Now let me ask; does insurance really make your life easier? But of course it does! It pays for everything from chemotherapy to a tonsillectomy to an MRI to a routine physical. For $5, you can go see the doctor. Isn’t that a good deal?

Well, not really, according to Jonathan Kellerman at the Wall Street Journal. If you believe Kellerman, American healthcare will benefit if we have fewer people insured. Health insurance, responding to our demand that it cover everything, has done so. But at what cost? The cost of rising co-pays for patients and impossible paperwork for doctors. And contrary to popular belief, health insurance makes doctor visits more expensive. They can’t cover every runny nose for free, so they gaffe you for more than you’ll ever use. We don’t need more insurance—we need less. Less insurance will, by Kellerman’s analysis, drive down the cost of healthcare and make it more available. And isn’t that what we all want?

What would we ever do without the FDA?

If you’re a typical American, you probably think we’d all die. We need the FDA to approve drugs so they don’t kill us, right? If it was left to the drug companies they’d never test anything and we wouldn’t know if that bizarre vitamin concoction we just bought at Walgreen’s is safe or not.

To quote Capt. Teneal of MXC, “Well, you’re wrong.” The FDA is not keeping us safer. In fact it misses many side effects, some of them very dangerous, when approving drugs. In addition, the near decade it takes to put a drug through the federal bureaucracy leaves critically ill patients with fewer options. A drug that could save a cancer patient’s life is denied him because it’s only 6 years into the approval process. Honestly, if you were dying of cancer would you not take a drug that might kill you and instead live with cancer that will kill you? According to Mom and Dad Government, it’s better for you to die than take a chance on an unapproved drug.

The FDA is failing us. It’s that simple. We don’t need to reform it. We don’t need to fix it. We need to get rid of it. Doctors who make drugs aren’t going to stay in business very long if they make drugs that kill their customers. That’s bad business. Drugs that don’t work won’t stay on the market very long, just like cars and air conditioners and computers that don’t work. People stop buying them.

I admit some part of me’s a little nervous about leaving substances I put into my body to the market. But the government sure isn’t working. When something’s not working, you don’t keep doing it. You abandon it and try something else. The FDA’s not working. Let’s hang an “Out of business” sign on its door and try something else.