TECHNOLOGY, FREEDOM, AND SAVING LIVES

When a super-genius tells you that you may have saved millions of lives, it really makes your day. 

You read about Durk Pearson last August, that he has an IQ M.I.T. was unable to measure as it was so far above the upper measurable limit of 220.  And you read about my having dinner with Chief Justice John Roberts last week in The Only Issue.

I was telling Durk about the dinner and how it wasn't appropriate for me to ask him substantive case questions, but that I was able to contribute to the conversation.  The connection between technology and freedom was raised and I offered to give an example.

The technology of gene sequencing, I said, can now, at the cost of many millions of dollars, sequence the entire genome of an individual person, identifying all the recognizable mutations and genetic defects that person has.

Gene sequencing technology is improving at such a rapid rate that a Moore's Law is now kicking in regarding it.

(Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 18 months or so for the foreseeable future.  His prediction has held true ever since, so much so that's it's dubbed Moore's Law.)

That is, the cost of fully sequencing an individual human being's entire genome, now in the many millions and taking many months, will drop in half – half the time and half the cost – every 18 months or so, until within a few years, anyone can have their genome sequenced for a few hundred bucks or less within a day or so.

And as the technology progresses, so will the identification of the function and defective variations of more and more genes.

Most mutations are common, I continued, but a given individual's combination of them is so rare it can be considered unique to that individual.  This means that compounding pharmacists – thanks to earlier decisions by your colleagues on the Court ( turning to Chief Justice Roberts) – can put together a particular mix of genetic fixes for that individual without FDA interference or prior approval.

The FDA, I asserted, has caused the death of uncountable numbers of Americans by having regulations that take up to a dozen years and close to a billion dollars to comply with for bringing one new drug to market.  It is an overwhelming obstacle preventing new science and technology from saving people's lives.

The FDA will try desperately in coming years to challenge the compounding pharmacists' now-legal ability to quickly bring the advances of gene sequencing to saving individual lives.  Hopefully, I concluded while glancing at the Chief Justice, they will fail.

The Chief Justice confirmed that there had been such decisions on the part of the Court, and then the dinner conversation turned to another topic.

Durk, who has won landmark cases against the FDA (Google "Pearson v. Shalala" and you'll get over 10,000 hits), gave this assessment: 

"Jack, what you said at that dinner table may result in millions – millions – of lives saved.  There's no way of telling how he or the Court as a whole will rule on future cases.  What we do know is that the FDA will constantly be trying various ways to get previous rulings on the freedom of compounding pharmacists weakened or overturned.  At least now Roberts has been forewarned of these efforts and the stakes involved.  Because of that, the FDA's chances may be greatly diminished, and if so, you may have saved many, many lives for many years to come."

Well, actually, it will be the Roberts Court that will save those lives, not me.  But in the meantime, this should be an example of how technology and freedom are intimately connected, and how government, when it intrudes into that connection, can break it with lethal results.

All of us can and will live far longer and far healthier lives if the government will just get out of the way.  Medical science and life extension research is gaining knowledge at an exponential rate – doubling every 2 or 3 years now.  Slowing down and preventing that knowledge from improving our lives is what government agencies such as the FDA do best.

Right now, conservatives are once again engaged in a holding action, playing defense and trying to block the Democrats' expansion of  government control over health care.  Maybe some distant day, conservatives might actually play offense and vigorously try to eliminate such control by eliminating entire government programs and agencies such as the FDA.

For until we do, what could be saving lives won't – and folks, those lives are ours.