Medical Freedom with Dr. Mary Ruwart CPD Ep#`15

Dr. Mary Ruwart joins me to talk about self-ownership, medical freedom and the seemingly radical idea of the Separation of Church and State.

You can follow her work at:

http://www.ruwart.com

Dr. Ruwart is a very warm, compassionate and intelligent person who truly believes, as I do, that the principles of individual liberty are the best ideas to organize a society upon.

We discuss her most recent book "Death By Regulation." http://www.ruwart.com/product/death-regulation Dr. Ruwart makes the compelling case that the increased FDA regulatory authority granted by the 1962 Drug Amendment Act has led to a stifling of innovation, the massive increase in drug costs and the death of nearly 15,000,000 Americans.

http://www.ruwart.com/blog/a-1962-law-slowed-drug-development-changing-it-could-slash-drug-prices.html

I've bashed big pharma many times in the past and our conversation made me reconsider redirecting the blame more toward the FDA and those laws that give it the authority which has created the modern drug industry.

We also discuss the concept of self-ownerships. This is the concept that you own yourself and that when the government tells you what you can and can't do they are violating this basic individual right.

Her take is that libertarianism or the repeat for individual rights is the compassionate way to organize society.

Dr. Ruwart was an early follower of Ayn Rand but felt there was something missing from her interpretation of individualism. She believes that humans have an innate need for other humans and that this is on the genetic level. And that charity and compassion are comparable with livery and help the person whose doing the helping more than those being helped.

Love thy neighbor is still valid today as it was 2000 years ago.

Dr. Ruwart also has a fascinating take on how government regulations are in fact a form of non-voluntary human experimentation that violates the ethical framework meant to protect people from being experimented upon without their consent. She is on the board of Institutional Review Board that is tasked with helping to insure that informed consent and certain guidelines are followed for human testing.

http://www.ruwart.com/blog/an-ethicist-asks-is-regulation-unethical-human-experimentation.html

During our conversation we also talk about the idea of The Separation of Medicine and State just as there is the Separation of Church and State. We discusses how both are based upon the same principle as self-ownership.

The topic of the opioid crisis came up as well. Dr. Ruwart shared her personal story of how she had to watch her sister with cancer needlessly suffering due to issues with the red tape around pain medicine. She also related how her sister became so ill and was in so much pain they decided together to go to Dr. Kervokian to end her life. A very powerful story and highlights how we need to change the laws to allow individual to exercise their inherent right of self determination and have painless, effective means of ending one's own life.

We had a great conversation about how we would all benefit from getting government out of your healthcare choices, the compassionate ethical side of libertarianism and how it's a matter of life and death when it comes to your medical freedom.

Thanks for tuning in. Let us know what you think about Medical Freedom.

Brad Miller

The Chronically Human Podcast