Lies the government told you

by Andrew P. Napolitano

  Only Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent made sense. According to Justice Thomas:

  Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything—and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers . . . By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commerce under the [Interstate] Commerce Clause, the Court abandons any attempts to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power.14 (emphases added)

  Beyond Justice Thomas’s eloquent defense of the Constitution, there is the Natural Law argument that if Diane Monson and Angel Raich thought using marijuana would help their chronic pain, who is the government to stop them? Even if there may be certain personal health risks involved in smoking marijuana, there are certain pain-relief benefits that Monson and Raich value over any possible risks. These are decisions for individuals and not the federal government to make. Just as the right to privacy lets a farmer grow as much wheat and bake and consume as much bread as he wishes, it also keeps the federal government out of the decision-making process for physicians and their patients.

  Here is what the Court has done: It has prohibited the government from intruding upon the patient-physician relationship if the government wants to save the life of a baby in a mother’s womb, but has permitted the government to intrude on the marital relationship between a farmer and wife and the patient-physician relationship if they are growing too much wheat or using any marijuana.

  Moreover, the revived use of the Commerce Clause power for everything under the sun is a particularly scary exercise of government power because it seems the Clause can be stretched to cover basically any activity, commercial or noncommercial, interstate or intrastate.

  The Raich case also unearths a battle between the states and the federal government regarding the use of medical marijuana. In 1996, voters in California voted for Proposition 215 (the Compassionate Use Act), which authorized use of medical marijuana. But, the high and mighty feds did not seem to take this vote into consideration. Raich proves that the state’s rights don’t matter, that the people’s rights to make personal decisions don’t matter; we all need to bow at the throne of federal authority, apparently. Here, the government’s falsehood is once again, we can choose what to do with our own bodies. In truth, the government does not even allow individuals to make choices regarding their bodies when their home state and their physicians expressly permit them to make those choices.

  The problematic nature of this clash between the state and federal governments is well illustrated by a June 2009 medical marijuana case. Charles Lynch operated a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay, California, where people would bring medical marijuana prescriptions from California physicians. Lynch’s business was run like any other pharmacy, not some type of covert drug operation. He held a grand opening in 2006, used signs to advertise, obtained a business license from the City of Morro Bay, and ran surveillance cameras for security. Yet, his business was raided by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents eleven months after opening. Lynch was sentenced to a year and a day in prison by a federal judge, even though he could have been sentenced to up to twenty years in federal prison based on the large amount of marijuana involved.

  Although the sentence was considered quite short in light of federal standards, it is a long time to spend in prison for doing something that was perfectly legal within his state. This state vs. federal government battle is bound to become more of an issue as several States are pushing for legislation similar to California’s. In the meantime, the only thing going up in smoke is the fundamental right to control what goes into our own bodies.

  The Right to Life

  If you were diagnosed with a rare disease and had only a few months to live, would you try an experimental drug that may save your life? Would you like the choice to do so? Too bad; your government won’t let you.

  In addition to prohibiting people from easing their pain with medical marijuana and growing wheat for their own consumption, the federal government’s red tape often makes it difficult for people who are dying to access potentially lifesaving drugs. The FDA’s approval process is painfully long (the average time from lab to shelf is about twelve years),15 and in the meantime people are dying.

  Under the current system, a medication must pass three stages of clinical tests before it gets FDA approval. In each phase, the drug is taken by a limited number of people so as to ascertain its effects. Yet, it is often difficult for sick people to gain access to these trials, and only a restricted number of people are allowed to try the drugs. If the drug passes all three phases of testing, the pharmaceutical company marketing it must file an application formally asking for the FDA’s approval to promote the drug. You can imagine how frustrating this process must be for those who have only a limited amount of time to live. One article asks, “If they are on the verge of dying, terminally [ill] patients argue, how is it ethical to deny them the only remaining chance they may have to recover or, at the very least, suffer less or live just a bit longer?”16

  Although a limited number of people are able to use experimental drugs through clinical trials, it seems as though getting into these trials is a matter of luck more than anything else: “Many people with life-threatening diseases cannot find appropriate clinical trials, live far from research centers or do not meet eligibility criteria to participate in the trials. Additionally, doctors are ‘lost in the bureaucratic mess of paperwork’ when they attempt to access the FDA’s programs designed to widen opportunities for the severely ill.”17 Clearly, this is another instance of government paternalism. As long as patients understand that there are risks involved in taking experimental treatments, they should be able to make their own life or death decisions.

  John Gotschall, a municipal worker in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered he had brain cancer after suffering a seizure at the wheel of his car, which caused him to drive into a snowbank. At forty-four years old, after being diagnosed and told that he had only a few months to live, Gotschall qualified for a clinical treatment trial. The treatment worked, and his tumor vanished almost immediately. While this is a tremendously happy ending for Gotschall, the treatment was still not available to the public ten years after it saved his life. Many people have undoubtedly died, and will die, without ever being given this treatment option.18

  There are many heart-wrenching stories about people who have lost not only their right to make decisions about their health, but their lives, as a result of the FDA’s policies. David Baxter, a high school student from Woodland, California,19 who was diagnosed with colon cancer, was prohibited from an experimental drug trial because, at age seventeen, he was too young to qualify. He never lived to see his eighteenth birthday.20

  Alita Randazzo, another colon cancer patient, was told that her last hope for survival was the experimental drug Erbitux. When she tried to qualify for a trial of Erbitux, she was told the trial had closed. Randazzo died in 2002 without ever being able to take the drug.21

  The Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs is an organization founded in 2001, after twenty-one-year-old Abigail Burroughs’s death. Burrough, a native of Fredericksburg, Virginia, died while trying to get access to experimental treatments for her cancer of the head and neck. Abigail’s father, Frank Burroughs, has continued her fight through the Abigail Alliance. The group’s goal is to change the FDA’s rigid, anti-personal-choice system so that patients and their physicians have the right to choose between dying untreated and taking experimental drugs.

  In 2006, in the case of Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach,22 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that terminally ill patients had a due process right to experimental, but potentially lifesaving drugs. In the court’s opinion, Judge Janice W. Rogers wrote, “A ri
ght of control over one’s body has deep roots in the common law.23 . . . The prerogative asserted by the FDA . . . impinges upon an individual liberty deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition of self-preservation.”24 The phrases “deep roots in the common law” and “tradition of self-preservation” mean that the right to control your own body preceded the existence of the United States; hence it is a fundamental—or natural—right.

  The FDA, however, requested that the entire D.C. Circuit, rather than a three-judge panel, rehear the case. The Circuit complied, and ruled 8 to 2 against the Abigail Alliance. The Abigail Alliance appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. The government deception, upheld through the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case, displays the Court’s sheer disrespect for fundamental rights that are protected by the Constitution and inherent in our humanity.

  Here’s an interesting tidbit: Three States—Montana, Oregon, and Washington—permit physicians to assist patients in ending their lives. The FDA, however, has made it nearly impossible for us to get experimental drugs when we want to save our lives. If the laws in some states let you kill yourself, how can the federal government not let you cure yourself?

  Who’s in Charge Here?

  While one aspect of paternalism involves the government prohibiting individuals from putting certain foods and substances into their bodies, we are also infantilized when the government forces medical treatments upon us. This form of paternalism extends well beyond the important issue of being able to control your own body, as it often interferes with religious freedom as well.

  In May 2009, FBI officials spent Memorial Day weekend frantically searching Southern California and New Mexico. Were they in search of a dangerous criminal? No. A terrorist? Guess again. They were trying to hunt down a thirteen-year-old boy diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer. The boy, Daniel Hauser, and his mother fled from their Minnesota town after a local judge ordered Daniel Hauser’s parents to consent to chemotherapy treatment for Daniel. Eventually, Daniel and his parents obeyed the court order, and he underwent chemotherapy.

  Daniel Hauser and his parents are part of a Native-American religion called Nemenhah, in which the belief in natural treatments and remedies is prevalent. Yet, the reasoning behind their refusal of the treatment is much less important than the issue surrounding it. Although Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a highly treatable form of cancer, chemotherapy is also a very painful, sickening, and difficult treatment.25 In fact, it is no treatment at all. It delays and arrests cancer. It does not and cannot cure the patient of cancer.

  No matter the reasoning behind the refusal, the idea that the government could force us into a treatment is very scary. It is Daniel Hauser—not the government—who will be subjected to these treatments and who will suffer from all the nausea and other side effects that result from chemotherapy that he had freely chosen to reject. And it is not as though Hauser can use medical marijuana (which many physicians believe helps ease the side effects of chemotherapy), because, as we have seen, the government prohibits that, too.

  Since beginning chemotherapy, it has been reported that Hauser’s tumor has shrunk significantly. While she is still skeptical of chemo’s effect on the body, Daniel’s mother, Colleen, has commented that “something’s working.” Yet, Daniel is angry about being forced into the treatment and has said, “I get really sick when I do it . . . You get so dizzy and I get a headache right away.”26

  Hauser’s story sounds remarkably similar to that of Billy Best, a sixteen-year-old from a small town twenty miles southwest of Boston, Massachusetts. Billy ran away from home to avoid cancer treatment. He returned only after his parents consented to the alternative treatments that Billy desired. In 1994, a court ruled in favor of Billy, allowing him to pursue alternative treatments. He eventually overcame his cancer without chemotherapy or radiation.

  While chemotherapy is generally thought of as an effective treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, arguments against its use are not without merit. A report published in 2008 said that in addition to the immediate side effects, radiotherapy and chemotherapy have been associated with health problems that show up later in life, like infertility or cardiovascular damage.27 The government has no authority from any source to force an adult to take any medicine, no matter the personal health risk. Through policies like this, the Natural Law is once again violated and we lose control over our physical selves.

  As long as individuals know the relevant information regarding cancer treatment, it should be up to the sick person or his next of kin to decide whether he subjects himself to it. Technology is always changing—what is medically accepted one day may later be regarded as a bad treatment option. But one aspect of this never changes: the Natural Law. The Natural Law gives us control over our own bodies and keeps the government away. Given the fact that nothing is really conclusive in medical care, shouldn’t we be able to weigh the options regarding health care for ourselves?

  Why would the government even care about the choices we make regarding personal health? Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason magazine, explains:

  [P]olicies governing how and when we give sick people access to the medication that could mitigate their pain, ameliorate the side effects of their treatment, or even save their lives, aren’t based on compassion, individual rights, or even an honest assessment of science and risk. Instead, we have a patchwork of laws and enforcement policies driven by decades-old drug war hysteria, pharmaceutical paranoia, irrational aversion to risk, bureaucratic turf wars, and of course, politics.28

  And all the while, the government-knows-best crowd is still telling us we have control over our own bodies.

  As adults, our bodies belong to us. They don’t belong to anyone else, let alone the government. The purpose of the federal government is to protect our constitutional and natural rights, not to restrict them. As children, our mothers and fathers know better than the government does how to raise us, and it is their job as parents to educate and groom us to make important decisions in life. Some of us will make conservative decisions, and others will make risky ones. Some of us will lead healthy lives, while others will pollute their bodies. Contrary to the government’s belief, however, we have the right to make poor decisions and go against “mainstream” ideas. We’re allowed to be individuals. We have the natural right to control our bodies. The government has no right to make decisions for us and thus infringe upon this sacred right.

  Lie #8

  “The Federal Reserve Shall Be

  Controlled by Congress”

  On the foggy evening of November 22nd 1910, a train pulled out of the Lackawanna Railroad Station in Hoboken, New Jersey, and began its winding path to Jekyll Island, Georgia.1 At the time, no one paid much attention to its departure, unaware that it carried some of the most powerful people in the United States on a course for the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. The train carried its passengers to a secret conference, where they would forge together the first draft of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.2 Amazingly enough, the Act essentially called for Congress to hand over its constitutionally granted power to issue and regulate money to a group of private bankers. It sounds unbelievable, as usually the federal government will fight tooth and nail to expand, not shrink, its constitutional powers; but the federal government voluntarily and gladly gave away this express power.

  The years 1910 to 1913 were the height of the Progressive Era in American history. Congress, which would soon spearhead radical changes in the manner of the election of senators and federal taxation of personal income, authorized a privately held corporation to decide the monetary policy of the United States without oversight or accountability. And it justified its actions by two great lies: (1) the Federal Reserve will be controlled by Congress; and (2) it will bring about economic stability and prosperity for the American people.

  The federal government not only claimed, with a straight face, that it could exert control over a private cor
poration in which it was not even to be a stockholder but also claimed that such an uncontrolled private corporation would be working for the benefit of the American people rather than to enrich itself. It was to be the “lender of last resort” that would keep all Americans prosperous. As absurd as they sound, these myths continue to be believed and perpetuated even today.

  From Gold to Toilet Paper

  America’s Founding Fathers recognized that the federal government would need to issue currency and regulate money, yet they also recognized a need for this currency to be backed by gold or silver or a stable commodity. Otherwise, they knew the government could simply print as much paper as it wanted, without thought to the consequences. Prior to the ratification of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers witnessed for themselves the disaster that awaits any currency not backed by gold or silver.

  From the time of the Revolution to the time of the Civil War, a common phrase expressing worthlessness was “not worth a Continental”; but how many of us realize its derivation from the monetary system envisioned by the Constitution? At the time of the Revolutionary War, when this country was fighting for its independence from England, the Continental Congress was in dire need of money, and because it was low on gold (or hard money), it issued fiat money called the Continental. Fiat money is currency that the government has declared to be legal tender, thereby making it legally acceptable as payment for all debts, whether a creditor wants it or not, and whether it has inherent value or not. Unlike other forms of currency, fiat money is not representative, and therefore cannot be exchanged for a predetermined amount of an actual commodity, like gold or silver. In essence then, fiat money is just a piece of paper, worth only the amount that the economy will bear, no matter how much the government attempts to scam the people into believing it is worth.