Tom Bowden — VOICES for REASON

The Christian Science Monitor has my thoughts on the Tea Party movement and what it needs to succeed. Although the prospects are unfortunately dim, for reasons I give in the article, I do suggest there is a glimmer of hope, if the movement decides to get serious about individualism:

The tea party’s adherents would need to discover the moral principle underlying the often quoted but little understood ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They would need to argue that all schemes that sacrifice the individual to society are morally wrong. And they would need to argue that this country’s most rational and industrious citizens—including business leaders, doctors, health insurers, and taxpayers and productive individuals in all walks of life—are oppressed victims who deserve to be liberated, by permanent repeal of laws and regulations that invade their rights.

In short, the tea party would need to fully embrace individualism as a moral ideal. Although the odds against this are exceedingly large, I think there’s some cause for optimism. For the first time, a resistance movement is looking for answers in Ayn Rand’s writings. From the original public rant that inspired the tea party idea (when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli said “at the end of the day, I’m an Ayn Rander”) to last fall’s US Senate victory by Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson (who calls “Atlas Shrugged” his “foundational book”), Rand’s uncompromising defense of individualism has become a part of the tea-party mix.

Can the tea party deliver on its promise to cut back big government? Yes it can, but not unless its supporters awaken to the need for moral intransigency in pursuing individual liberty.

I’ll be interested to read the comments that are accumulating, to see how other interested observers view the movement’s future. And this just in: Yahoo News has picked up the article.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

For several decades now, legal professionals have been debating how best to interpret the Constitution. One school of thought touts the “living Constitution” whose meaning changes over time as new “social realities” arise. Another school of thought, “originalism,” holds that the document means what it was understood to mean when ratified.

Each viewpoint has its detractors. Opponents of the living Constitution argue that it eviscerates the rule of law by granting unelected judges the power to legislate. Opponents of originalism, on the other hand, object to the idea that twenty-first century Americans must be shackled to the erroneous, outdated knowledge of men who lived hundreds of years ago.

What has been missing from this debate is any suggestion of a workable theory that avoids both types of objection. So far, no one has offered a method by which judges can objectively adhere to the drafters’ original words, while simultaneously taking account of all the moral and scientific progress that has occurred since the Constitution and its various amendments were ratified.

That situation may be improving, however, thanks to the efforts of a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, Tara Smith. In an article for the journal Constitutional Commentary, Dr. Smith offers a philosopher’s perspective on the debate and points the way toward a new theory that promises to resolve the dispute permanently.

Originalism, she writes, is an “impressively resilient doctrine” that is ultimately untenable. Why? Because it assumes that “words lack objective meaning,” and therefore the best judges can do is discover “the historical fact of what the understanding of particular words was at the time of the law’s enactment.”

Smith trains a philosophical spotlight on this originalist argument, bringing to bear the insights of epistemology, the science of knowledge. Originalism is mistaken, she asserts, in supposing that words lack objective meaning. “Concepts are objective,” she states—a big, controversial statement that introduces a lucid discussion of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist epistemology and how it can be applied to the problem of interpreting legal language.

Just to mention one of many examples, she discusses why the concept “religion” in the First Amendment, objectively interpreted, includes Mormonism—even though that sect had not been conceived when the First Amendment was ratified in 1791. Although other philosophers and legal scholars have discussed epistemology with regard to such questions, Smith’s work stands out by virtue of its unique application of Rand’s theory. Smith’s overarching theme is fully stated in her article’s title: “Originalism’s Misplaced Fidelity: “Original” Meaning Is Not Objective.”

Smith makes no claim to have articulated a full theory of legal interpretation, characterizing her article “only a step in that direction.” Even so, her article is packed with far more insights than a single blog post could possibly indicate without verging upon the facile. Those with a serious interest in constitutional interpretation should lay their hands on Smith’s article and read it thoroughly.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Richard Pazdur, the FDA’s top regulator of cancer drugs, is busy defending his agency’s decision to rescind approval of Avastin for treating breast cancer. In this Wall Street Journal article, he’s quoted as saying “the drug has a marginal effect on tumor growth.” As I indicate in my Pajamas Media article, he’s talking about the drug’s effect on average.

But as we know, averages are drawn from the experiences of actual individuals, some of whom have a better experience than the average. (And even the average experience, he admits, is positive.) Yet the FDA regards it as its professional duty to ignore every particular individual’s benefit, in favor of a collective decision. (The image accompanying this post is an actual slide from an FDA PowerPoint presentation, showing graphically how the agency conceives its risk-benefit analysis as collective rather than individual.)

Wait, did I say the FDA ignores the patients who benefit? That’s not quite true. Toward the end of the article, Pazdur makes a startling admission. “There may be a subset of women who could be helped by Avastin, but Genentech [Avastin’s manufacturer] needs to figure out who they are,” the article says.

Although the phrasing is cagey, Pazdur clearly knows what the rest of the world is shouting—that some women with breast cancer are benefiting from the drug. Nevertheless, he is perfectly comfortable with the FDA’s decision to withdraw approval of the drug. Why? Because some other women don’t benefit, and Genentech cannot yet scientifically separate the two groups.

It never occurs to Pazdur to question whether one individual woman’s right to undergo a successful treatment should hinge on whether some other women can’t share that benefit. To him and his FDA cohorts, sick people are dots on a statistical curve, and it’s only the curve that matters.

Image: Food and Drug Administration, “Overview and Introduction to Drug Regulation,” Slide No. 5

Last month, the FDA began withdrawing approval of Avastin for treating breast cancer. Over at Pajamas Media, I explained why that violates the rights of sick patients. Now USA Today is attempting to quell the “Outcry over FDA withdrawal of anti-cancer drug Avastin” by painting the drug’s advocates as emotionalist, unscientific crybabies. Here’s the article’s approach in a nutshell:

“The emotional appeal is so compelling,” Fran Visco, president of the non-profit National Breast Cancer Coalition, says of breast cancer patients doing well on Avastin. But, Visco says, “drug approval cannot be based on any individual story. It has to be based on the highest level of science.”

Let’s stop and think about this for a minute. Ms. Visco refers to “breast cancer patients doing well on Avastin.” In other words, she’s talking about actual, living women with a dreadful, fatal disease, who are actually benefiting from the drug. What is Ms. Visco’s attitude toward them? Well, she’s willing to concede emotional sympathy with their anger at losing access to Avastin.

But according to Ms. Vasco, these individual women need to put aside their petty, individual concerns in deference to the demands of science. As she puts it, any given woman’s “individual story” has nothing to do with FDA regulators’ quest to reach “the highest level of science.” What is that “highest level of science”? It consists of statistical studies on large aggregates of patients, studies that deliberately ignore the individual patient in favor of averages.

In my article, I talk about the FDA’s idea that Avastin does not “represent a favorable risk/benefit analysis”:

Does that mean the drug fails to help any woman more than it hurts her? Not at all—many individual women benefit from the drug. But the FDA regards such facts as sentimental distractions, to be deliberately ignored when deciding the fate of a drug like Avastin. The FDA’s idea of a risk/benefit analysis deals with health in the aggregate, as revealed in statistics involving large populations, not with the health of individuals.

But can risks and benefits really be weighed at the level of society as a whole? A society is only a collection of individuals. A society doesn’t enjoy life, or suffer—only individuals do. Metaphors aside, a society doesn’t get sick and die—only individuals do. To appreciate the difference, consider how a rational patient with breast cancer decides whether to undergo drug treatment.

Such a patient weighs (among other things) the statistical likelihood of a favorable result against the statistical likelihood of painful side effects. At all times, her judgment is individual and personal: How will my life improve if these tumors temporarily stop growing? How might side-effects interfere with my enjoyment of life? How much better will I feel if the results are above average—or how much worse, if the results are below average? How much is an additional year, month, or week of relatively normal life worth to me?

The FDA’s experts take professional pride in refusing to allow such individual considerations to influence their decisions. Instead, they float among the statistical clouds, observing that Avastin delays tumor growth by only 3 to 12 weeks on average and that some patients actually get worse after taking the drug. From behind a veneer of scientific respectability supplied by charts and graphs that ignore the individual patient, these experts then ask a question to which no rational answer can be given: What is the meaning to society of one month in an individual’s life?

The bottom line is that statistical studies are useful tools for individual risk analysis—but when the FDA coercively substitutes that collective data for the individual’s rightful choice, the agency turns that science against those who should benefit from it.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That was Karl Marx’s summary of communism, written back in the nineteenth century. Now, according to a recent Harris poll, it turns out that 42 percent of Americans mistakenly believe those words are contained somewhere in America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

That seems strange on its face. After all, Marxism’s ideas of class warfare, dictatorship of the proletariat, and communism have failed to attract a following in the United States (leaving aside the many university professors who still cling to Marx’s vision). I’m quite sure that very few, if any, of the 42 percent who were polled would identify themselves as Marxists or communists.

But the widespread error about the founding documents becomes understandable when we shift our focus from politics to morality. I think what explains this poll is the fact that most Americans accept the moral premise underlying communism. They believe, on some level, that moral virtue consists of sacrificing one’s ability and wealth in the service of others. And they have gotten used to acting on that belief, as shown by the creation of a welfare state in America during the twentieth century.

Here’s how philosopher Leonard Peikoff explained this phenomenon in his book The Ominous Parallels:

The Americans were political revolutionaries but not ethical revolutionaries. Whatever their partial (and largely implicit) acceptance of the principle of ethical egoism, they remained explicitly within the standard European tradition, avowing their primary allegiance to a moral code stressing philanthropic service and social duty. Such was the American conflict: an impassioned politics presupposing one kind of ethics, within a cultural atmosphere professing the sublimity of an opposite kind of ethics.

If nothing else, the Harris poll makes clear that our educational institutions need to do a better job teaching people what the Founding Fathers really accomplished in the founding documents. What they did was found a new nation on an ethical principle that was the opposite of that reflected in Marx’s slogan. Ayn Rand summarized the Founders’ achievement this way:

The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness—which means: man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; and that the political implementation of this right is a society where men deal with one another as traders, by voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Early news reports indicate that the Food and Drug Administration is withdrawing its approval for the use of Avastin to combat advanced breast cancer. This, as I argue in my Pajamas Media article on the controversy, is a travesty. Here’s a video version of that article:

Over the weekend, Pajamas Media published my op-ed “The Avastin Travesty.” The timing is good, because the federal Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to vote this week on withdrawing approval of the cancer-fighting drug Avastin, for treatment of breast cancer.

Here’s some of what I said (click here for the full article, which includes an active comment section):

The FDA is slated to decide whether to follow the advice of its own Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, which back in July voted 12-1 that Avastin does not “represent a favorable risk/benefit analysis.” Does that mean the drug fails to help any woman more than it hurts her? Not at all — many individual women benefit from the drug. But the FDA regards such facts as sentimental distractions, to be deliberately ignored when deciding the fate of a drug like Avastin. The FDA’s idea of a risk/benefit analysis deals with health in the aggregate, as revealed in statistics involving large populations, not with the health of individuals.

But can risks and benefits really be weighed at the level of society as a whole? A society is only a collection of individuals. A society doesn’t enjoy life, or suffer — only individuals do. Metaphors aside, a society doesn’t get sick and die — only individuals do. To appreciate the difference, consider how a rational patient with breast cancer decides whether to undergo drug treatment.

Such a patient weighs (among other things) the statistical likelihood of a favorable result against the statistical likelihood of painful side effects. At all times, her judgment is individual and personal: How will my life improve if these tumors temporarily stop growing? How might side-effects interfere with my enjoyment of life? How much better will I feel if the results are above average — or how much worse, if the results are below average? How much is an additional year, month, or week of relatively normal life worth to me?

The FDA’s experts take professional pride in refusing to allow such individual considerations to influence their decisions. Instead, they float among the statistical clouds, observing that Avastin delays tumor growth by only 3 to 12 weeks on average and that some patients actually get worse after taking the drug. From behind a veneer of scientific respectability supplied by charts and graphs that ignore the individual patient, these experts then ask a question to which no rational answer can be given: What is the meaning to society of one month in an individual’s life?

When choosing what medicines to take, each individual patient is entitled to regard his or her own life as the most precious thing in the world.  But the FDA regularly outlaws that kind of individualistic decision-making. Tell me again why we tolerate the FDA?

[Update: Thanks to Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com for linking to my Pajamas Media article.]

Image: Wikimedia Commons

It seems like only yesterday when cries of “Repeal Obamacare!” were sending thrills (or chills, depending on your point of view) up the spines of American voters. But now, according to this article from NPR, that chant has morphed into “repeal and replace”—and who do we find in the vanguard but American businesses.

Here are a few paragraphs from the NPR article, with my comments interspersed:

“No one has said what this bill would be replaced with,” said Richard Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association. “But doing away with this would certainly be the wrong thing. … People have been gearing up for some time, well before this actual bill got passed, to make these changes locally, and have invested a lot.”

It’s not just hospitals. Employers, particularly large employers, have already put considerable time, effort and money into implementing the parts of the law that have already taken effect. And just the possibility that the law will be repealed or substantially changed could present a serious problem.

“It takes a long lead time to execute any policy, so at this point having a lot of uncertainty and policy volatility really works against helping us to move toward solving the problems of the country,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, which represents many of the Fortune 100 corporations.

There are many things worth noting here, but what I find especially fascinating is the utter absence of any concern with freedom. There is simply no concept that repealing Obamacare might (partially) liberate hospitals, insurance companies, doctors, patients, and businesses to deal with health care issues according to their own best judgment. Rather, the sole concern is with minimizing the costs of “executing policy.” Whose policy? The government’s.

Of course, I make allowances for the fact that this article focuses on lobbyists, not business owners or managers whose private opinions might differ (and whose opinions one would not necessarily expect the left-leaning NPR to publicize). I also concede that businesses have a legitimate interest in minimizing the expense of keeping up with volatile government programs. Yet we must keep in mind that the passage of Obamacare was not some minor re-jiggling of regulations hashed out behind closed doors—it was a milestone event that excited widespread national debate over the limits of government power. That’s a context in which even companies that are normally afraid to peek out of their foxholes might think about taking a stand in their own defense. Yet the NPR article continues:

Plus, says Darling, with the number of uninsured Americans at 50 million and growing, “starting over would make it virtually impossible to make real progress anytime soon.”

Here, it’s taken for granted that complex government policies will control everyone’s action in the realm of health care. What Ms. Darling counts as “progress” therefore consists of settling on one set of policies, so that her Fortune 100 clients can accommodate themselves to the government’s will. It’s not clear how typical are the opinions reflected in this article, but I haven’t heard about significant groups expressing opposite views.

That’s not to say that the health care industry loves the law. No segment of the industry got everything it wanted, and everyone is busy lobbying for something to be changed.

“There are plenty of opportunities for improvement, fine-tuning and actually adding some significant enhancements, especially in controlling costs,” Darling says.

Observe that doctors, hospitals, health insurers, and businesses that pay for health care all seem to accept the status of pressure groups, pleading for favors. Who’s the dispenser of those favors? The government.

The health insurance industry, in fact, wants to make more than just fine-tuning changes. It’s been among the most outspoken critics of the measure. But even insurers haven’t come out in favor of scrapping the whole law and starting over—particularly not when it stands to get millions of new customers.

Millions of new customers? Oh, yes—that’s what the industry expects from Obamacare’s mandate that every individual buy health insurance. And when you think about it, that’s entirely consistent with the health care industry’s status as a pressure group. After all, isn’t a pressure group’s success often measured by the number of dollars that can be sucked out of other people’s pockets?

In all this, there’s no mention that any of the individuals or businesses involved have rights—meaning moral entitlements to freedom from coercive interference while doing business. But in my view, Obamacare is a massive assault on individual rights that should be obliterated, as a first step toward achieving a free market in health care. I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, but I’m disappointed that nobody (including Obamacare’s worst victims) even seems to find it worth talking about.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

For more than a century, federal largesse has shielded people living in bad-weather areas from the economic costs of their decision to locate there. (I’ve discussed this elsewhere.)

One such area is called the “American Bottom” region, consisting of 174 square miles directly across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. Since the 1950s, a huge federally financed levee has protected American Bottom residents and businesses from the great river’s frequent floods. The levee is 52 feet high. It runs 75 miles north and south. And to maintain it costs a lot of money.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, federal funding has not kept up with the need for maintenance. As a result, the American Bottom levee is among the weather-ravaged levees that is no longer deemed capable of defying a 100-year flood. Among other things, that means everyone in American Bottom with a federal loan will have to buy federal flood insurance.

As you read the following portion of a Wall Street Journal article on these developments, notice the economic lesson that’s dawning on American Bottom’s residents:

Judy Hamilton, who owns a chemical blending and packaging business in Dupo, a village of 4,000, has already taken a hit. She was required to buy flood insurance after she expanded and refinanced the loans on her factory in 2008. She is now paying an extra $7,000 a year for the insurance.

“Every little cost factor cuts us back,” she said. “Nobody benefits but the government.”

Some local officials have complained that the remapping is intended to raise money for the National Flood Insurance Program, which is $18.5 billion in debt in the wake of Katrina and other storms. . . .

Mayor Hagnauer of Granite City says tacking more than $1,000 a year in some cases onto mortgage payments could push the city over the edge. The town of 31,000 boasts a new, $4.6 million city-built movie theater, a struggling main street and the huge US Steel Granite City Works two blocks from City Hall.

“We’d be a ghost town,” Mr. Hagnauer said.

What these people are learning firsthand is that when the costs of protecting against bad weather are borne by the property owners themselves, the economic calculation to stay or go suddenly includes some dramatic new numbers. Indeed, the cost difference may be so great as to cause entire settled areas to be abandoned.

Those who live in high-risk areas like American Bottom are counting on the rest of us—the taxpayers who fund massive levee maintenance—to keep on accepting it as our duty to spare them the risks of weather disasters. I, for one, reject that duty. I would like for situations like that in American Bottom to become a first step toward undoing decades of distortion wrought by the federally funded “weather welfare-state.” It’s high time that the taxpayers who foot the bills start thinking more seriously about the value of a free market in weather-related insurance, protection, and disaster recovery.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The official description of this creative video contest is as enticing as it is brief:

Create a short web video, 3 minutes max, on how Ayn Rand’s epic story relates to current issues in society or in your own life. And have fun doing it.

Sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute, videos will be judged on their intellectual strength, creativity and persuasiveness.

I can’t wait to see all the imaginative angles that creative people will be coming up with. But note: the deadline is December 8, 2010, less than a month away.

Entries are already being posted on the Atlas Shrugged website. First prize is $5,000! Viewers can also vote on their favorites, and the creator of the most popular entry will win an Apple iPad stocked with Ayn Rand’s writings.