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Can Someone Help Me Understand Something? [1]

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Date: 2023-04-08  

The latest ruling from a Texas Judge banning the sale of the drug Mifepristone has left me totally dumbfounded. Not because he ruled the way he did, after all, he is a Trump confirmed, rightwing nut case. But rather that a Judge, any judge of any party, has the authority to overrule the FDA.

Last I looked, with the possible exception of Forensic Pathologists, Scientists do Science, and Lawyers do Law. Where does the authority for a Judge to question science come from? I know that we have a long history of religion vs science. We can go back to the arrest of Galileo back when the Church was the law. Or the Scopes trial in the 1920s. There has always been a conflict between science and religion.

But how is it, that secular law, is allowed to overrule Science? I do not understand how that is even a thing. Now, one can argue whether the FDA is too slow or too quick in approving a new drug. But that is a scientific and medical argument not a legal one. Or at least it should be. What is the point of undertaking all sorts of trials and studies if the results can be totally disregarded by someone with a law degree?

Can some judge come out and declare that the earth is flat? Can some judge determine that distance over time is not velocity. Can a judge come out and tell people that they can no longer get vaccinated for hepatitis, or measles, or polio or any of dozens of other diseases. So, if I go to law school and rise to the level of a Federal Court Justice, I can just decide which drugs I will allow and which ones I won’t. despite not having any training in health or pharmacology?

Now this is not to say there are not areas when there needs to be the meeting of minds between legal and illegal uses of science. Science created nuclear weapons, but the use of those weapons needs to be regulated. We can debate the way the internet is used and how it is regulated but we cannot simply let one judge decide which websites are allowed and which ones are banned. and we cannot allow one judge to decide which medicines are good and which are bad.

Laws were created by legislation regarding the use of certain recreational drugs. Now through legislation some of those drugs are legal for medical purposes or even recreational purposes. But it was the elected legislature, at state and federal levels that made those decisions. Not an appointed judge.

We know where this is going of course. If the morning after pill can be banned, of course, birth control pills will be next on the list. How about HRT, hormone replacement therapies, that are used to treat menopause and other conditions. What if a judge decides that we should ban drugs used by infertile couples to increase fertility? Maybe someone can find a judge who will ban insulin for diabetics.

We are on a slippery slope when a single judge in a single district can singlehandedly ban a drug for no reason other than someone complains about it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/8/2162875/-Can-Someone-Help-Me-Understand-Something

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