Travere's FILSPARI wins FDA full approval as first and only treatment for FSGS, expanding label beyond IgA nephropathy
- Approval specifically targets reduction of proteinuria in FSGS patients without nephrotic syndrome.
Monday, April 13, 2026
Travere's FILSPARI wins FDA full approval as first and only treatment for FSGS
Hong Kong And The Quiet Rewiring Of The Dollar System
by Peter C. Earle, Ph.D,
Hong Kong’s decision to move forward with its first stablecoin issuer licenses may prove to be about far more than digital payments. With HSBC and a Standard Chartered-led venture among the first approved issuers under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s new framework, the city is placing major regulated banks at the center of the next phase of monetary technology. Stablecoins remain overwhelmingly USD- and US Treasury-denominated, with more than 90 percent of the market’s roughly $300 billion capitalization tied to the US Treasury by one or the other, but the more important long-term story may be Asia’s role in transforming stablecoins from simple crypto settlement tools into the foundation of a real-time, on-chain foreign exchange and collateral ecosystem. In monetary terms, this is one more step in the migration of fiat liabilities from legacy banking rails onto programmable bearer-like instruments, a development with potentially profound implications for currency competition, reserve demand, and the future topology of the international monetary order.
The immediate effect of Hong Kong dollar stablecoins is easy to see: faster, cheaper, and programmable movement of HKD liquidity across exchanges, wallets, and cross-border commercial networks. The more consequential implication is that Asia may become the proving ground for blockchain-native FX and eurocurrency-style offshore liquidity markets, but in tokenized form. The region already hosts the world’s densest trade, remittance, and supply chain corridors, making it the natural venue for the next generation of synthetic money markets. Once local currency stablecoins begin operating under credible legal frameworks - HKD today, possibly Singapore dollars, offshore yuan proxies, and other regional currencies tomorrow - firms could increasingly swap tokenized fiat claims instantly on shared rails instead of relying on correspondent banks, delayed settlement windows, and multiple layers of intermediary fees. Economically, this reduces transaction frictions, compresses spreads, and lowers the velocity drag traditionally imposed by cross-border settlement risk.
Yet this is what makes Hong Kong’s move strategically significant: Hong Kong’s currency board peg to the US dollar gives an HKD stablecoin an unusual dual identity. It remains a local currency instrument that borrows much of its credibility from its dollar link. That makes it a natural bridge between the existing dollarized stablecoin universe and a more plural currency architecture. Hong Kong is not really challenging dollar stablecoin dominance so much as creating a regulated side door into it, while also building optionality should regional trade blocs increasingly seek invoicing diversity. Because the HKD already trades in a tightly managed band against the greenback, an HKD token can function akin to a dollar settlement instrument – a quasi-dollar - for Asian commerce while preserving local currency denomination. In the larger dedollarization trend, it’s less about displacing the dollar as reserve money than about disaggregating the mechanisms through which dollar liquidity is accessed, transferred, and rehypothecated.
A more interesting take is that Asia may not be driving dedollarization so much as a competitive fiat pluralization under “shadow dollar” pricing. Dollar stablecoins such as Tether and USD Coin succeeded because users in emerging markets wanted a portable, digitally native dollar substitute - effectively a market response to weak domestic monetary institutions. What Hong Kong now points toward is the next evolutionary step: using the same blockchain infrastructure not merely to store dollars, but to exchange among currencies continuously, cheaply, and at near-instant speed. That could make foreign exchange itself – paradoxically, one of the world’s largest and most liquid but still infrastructure-heavy markets - more programmable, accessible, and dramatically faster. In that sense, stablecoins increasingly resemble a privately intermediated digital version of the classical gold exchange standard’s layered settlement logic: local claims circulating atop a trusted reserve anchor, except the anchor today is fiat credibility rather than specie.
There are, as always, risks. HKD stablecoins inherit not only the strengths but also the vulnerabilities of their native Hong Kong peg. Any future reassessment of the linked exchange rate system, however unlikely in the near term, would immediately raise questions about reserve composition, redemption certainty, duration mismatch, and collateral quality/sufficiency. That is precisely why Hong Kong’s emphasis on high-quality liquid reserves, segregated accounts, and bank-led issuance matters so much. The intent is clearly to make stablecoins an extension of trusted monetary plumbing rather than an exogenous, arguably speculative, parallel system. For sound money observers, the key issue is whether these instruments remain genuinely redeemable claims on short-duration, high-quality assets, or whether they gradually become another layer of maturity transformation disguised as digital certainty.
The larger point is that Asia’s real comparative advantage in stablecoins may not lie in issuing yet another dollar token. It may lie in building the first credible internet-native foreign exchange market, where local currencies, dollar proxies, and trade settlement instruments move across the same interoperable rails. Viewed this way, Hong Kong’s recent action is less a crypto story than a primal blueprint for how Asia could modernize the foreign exchange architecture of global commerce while subtly reshaping the channels through which dollar dominance is exercised. This is one important piece of the broader reserve currency puzzle: not the end of dollar primacy, but the emergence of new transactional layers beneath it.
A more provocative angle is that the future of stablecoins in Asia may not be about replacing the dollar, but about forcing a competition between fiat systems, gold-linked alternatives, and dollar proxies on rails where settlement quality, collateral transparency, and convertibility matter more than empty rhetoric or hopeful economic projections. In that sense, Hong Kong’s move is only the latest in an ongoing global search for a post-Bretton Woods III monetary architecture; one in which trust is increasingly measured not by sovereign declaration alone, but by the quality, liquidity, and auditability of the assets standing behind digital claims.
Peter C. Earle, Ph.D is Director of Economics, AIER
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/hong-kong-and-quiet-rewiring-dollar-system
California Lawmakers Introduce The "Stop Nick Shirley Act"
It would appear that independent journalist Nick Shirley's expose on medical subsidies fraud in California, largely perpetrated by immigrants, was more devastating to Democrats than anyone could have guessed.
After making waves in Minneapolis by revealing rampant daycare fraud run by Somali migrants feeding on millions in government subsidies (and likely funneling some of that cash to Democrat politicians), Nick Shirley traveled to the Golden State only to find more fraud, including voting scams and medical care scams.
🚨 California is the breeding ground for voter fraud in America, as millions of people vote with no ID, month-long election processes, inaccurate voter rolls, dead people caught voting, even a dog successfully registered to vote, and voter verification is all based on your… pic.twitter.com/7nOIZe5x9D
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) February 16, 2026
The investigation has apparently led to at least 21 arrests associated with medical fraud just after Shirley published his report, though no official sources have confirmed a direct connection.
This brand of taxpayer theft is an ever present problem within blue states where Democrats and migrants seem to work hand-in-hand. But the real giveaway is the fact that Democrats, NGOs and leftist activist groups respond with such hostility to any efforts to expose migrant fraud.
In Minnesota, the state government and NGOs enabled violent leftist mobs in order to distract from the Somali fraud issue and prevent ICE agents from making arrests. This is how important these scam networks are to the political left.
In California we find similar behavior, but this time lawmakers are actually pushing legislation that would help to prevent future journalists like Nick Shirley from identifying the locations tied to taxpayer theft schemes.
Shirley Responds
"California is trying to pass a bill that would criminalize investigative journalism with misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, imprisonment, and content takedown," Shirley posted on X. "Under AB 2624, government-funded entities like the Somali “Learing” Daycare centers would be protected from being exposed if they operated inside California."
California is trying to pass a bill that would criminalize investigative journalism with misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, imprisonment, and content takedown.
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) April 13, 2026
The proposed bill is titled AB 2624 and was made after I exposed mass fraud by immigrant groups in America.
Under AB 2624,… pic.twitter.com/4p0SjO7hOZ
Is the Bill Real and Current?
Yes - AB 2624 (2025-2026 session) is an active, real piece of legislation titled "Privacy for immigration support services providers." It was introduced on February 20, 2026, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D), and it was amended on April 9, 2026. As of April 13, 2026, it has advanced through committee (read second time and amended) and remains in progress in the Assembly.
What the Bill Actually Does
The bill extends an existing address confidentiality program (modeled after protections for reproductive health care and gender-affirming care providers) to "designated immigration support services providers," their employees, volunteers, and household members.
Key provisions include:
- Prohibiting anyone from knowingly posting, displaying, disclosing, or distributing on the internet or social media the personal information or images of these individuals with the specific intent to incite violence, threaten harm, or enable a crime involving violence against them.
- Banning soliciting, selling, or trading such information/images with the same harmful intent.
- Penalties: Misdemeanor violations carry fines up to $10,000 per violation, imprisonment (typically up to 1 year), or both. It also creates civil remedies, including potential damages.
- Confidentiality: It shields home addresses in public records and allows affected individuals to seek removal of threatening content.
Officially, the bill aims to protect workers at nonprofits and service providers (potentially including daycares serving immigrants) from doxxing and harassment amid rising threats of violence. It creates new crimes and state-mandated local programs but does not explicitly mention "journalism" or ban filming in public.
Nick Shirley walks up to 6 consecutive government-funded hospice providers in California—and finds NONE of them are open.
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 17, 2026
Miracle Healing - “Not a single piece of furniture.”
SX Home Health - Closed
Alpha Omega Ventana Hospice - “Grandma’s not going to Alpha and Omega.”… pic.twitter.com/3D49hLvo1v
DeMaio Punches Back
Critics, led by Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R), argue the bill is a direct response to Shirley's viral investigations. Shirley has documented alleged widespread fraud in taxpayer-funded programs run by certain immigrant groups, including empty or minimally staffed daycares and hospices claiming millions in government reimbursements (one series alleged over $170 million in California fraud). His on-the-ground videos - often filmed publicly - have gone massively viral and prompted scrutiny.
During a recent Assembly committee hearing, DeMaio directly confronted the bill’s author, Mia Bonta, over language that would allow individuals affiliated with certain organizations to demand the removal of video recordings - even if taken in public - and even impose costly financial penalties against those who publish the videos online.
“California Democrats are trying to intimidate citizen watchdog journalists and protect waste and fraud happening in far-left-wing NGOs. AB 2624 can only be described as the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ — a bill designed to silence citizen journalists exposing fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars..."
DeMaio's calls AB 2624 the “Stop Nick Shirley Act”:
“AB 2624 would allow activists and taxpayer-funded organizations to demand the removal of video evidence — even if it captures misconduct in plain view — and threatens journalists with massive financial penalties… If this bill becomes law, the message is clear to every journalist in California: expose corruption and you will be punished. AB 2624 is an unconstitutional direct attack on transparency and the First Amendment.”
CA Democrats Caught Protecting Fraudsters with the "Stop Nick Shirley" Act (AB 2624)
— Carl DeMaio (@carldemaio) April 13, 2026
Learn More: https://t.co/NXcKrcLb1z pic.twitter.com/l4HFXbeP0y
The law would be a direct violation of the 1st Amendment, which is why Democrats included language of "violence and threats", giving them a legal loophole which they hope will help them to circumvent freedom of speech protections. If passed, it would allow any organization or fraud group involved in taxpayer theft to simply declare that they "feel threatened" or "have been threatened" and ostensibly force a citizen journalist to censor videos and articles that discuss the group's criminal activities.
In other words, Democrats are creating laws designed to protect criminals and criminalize free speech, but what else is new. They didn't seem to have a problem with CNN harassing MAGA grannies.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/california-lawmakers-introduce-stop-nick-shirley-act
Rubio to chair Israel-Lebanon talks
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio will oversee direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday, according to the official schedule.
Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter and Lebanese ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad are expected to meet with Rubio in Washington to begin talks aimed at securing a ceasefire.
https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Rubio-to-chair-Israel-Lebanon-talks/66059583
United Airlines CEO Explores Merger with American Airlines
On April 13, 2026, United Airlines' CEO Scott Kirby suggested the possibility of a merger with American Airlines, a move that would face intense scrutiny even under a business-friendly administration. The stock ticker for United Airlines is UAL.
The suggestion of a merger between United Airlines and American Airlines is a significant development in the airline industry, which is already characterized by a high level of competition and market concentration. Both airlines rank among the top four in the U.S., collectively commanding over one-third of the market share. A merger would create the world's largest airline, raising serious antitrust concerns that could lead to opposition from consumers, politicians, and other airlines. Given the current regulatory environment, even under a business-friendly administration, such a merger would likely face intense scrutiny.
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/8790854/united-airlines-ceo-explores-merger-with-american-airlines
Playing the Trump card vs. Tehran
by Miranda Devine
A promising new stage in our six-week Iran “excursion” began Sunday with President Trump’s announcement that the US Navy, together with allies, will immediately begin to blockade “any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”
In wrestling terms, it’s a classic “swerve” move by the president, flipping the tables on his opponent.
Iran thought it had the world over an (oil) barrel. Turns out it signed its own economic death warrant.
The blockade is an inspired tactic pushed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and former Green Beret-turned-UN Ambassador Mike Waltz as the logical next step after the Chinese and Russians last week vetoed a UN Security Council resolution led by the Gulf States for international cooperation to reopen the Hormuz Strait.
With half the US Navy positioned just outside the narrow strait, everything is in place to stop the ships Tehran needs to serve its biggest customer, China, which buys about 90% of Iran’s oil.
And the blockade is just the beginning of the maximum economic pain Trump and his advisers are preparing to inflict on Iran, in what can be called “Operation Economic Epic Fury.”
As an ebullient Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning of the naval blockade: “It’s called all in, and all out. We think that numerous countries are going to be helping us with this also, but we’re putting on a complete blockade.
“We’re not going to let Iran make money on selling oil to people that they like, and not people that they don’t like or whatever it is. It’s going to be all or none,” he said. “I predict they come back and give us everything we want.”
‘Bad news for Iran’
Trump’s other master stroke was sending the administration’s biggest peacenik, Vice President JD Vance, to lead talks with Iran in Islamabad, alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, so he could see for himself how deluded the Iranians are about the cards they hold, and so the Iranians could see that there are no cracks in the administration’s resolve.
After 21 hours of talks with the Iranian delegation, while Trump fittingly attended a UFC cage fight with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Miami on Saturday night, Vance emerged to tell the world that there was no deal to end the war.
“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America … The simple question is: Do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon — not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term? We haven’t seen that yet. We hope that we will,” he said.
Trump, whom Vance said he called as many as a dozen times during the negotiations, told Bartiromo a few hours later that the Iranians “came in like they had the cards, but they don’t have the cards.
“Toward the end, it got very friendly, and we got just about every point we needed — except for the fact that they refuse to give up their nuclear ambition. And frankly, to me, that was the most important point by far,” he said. “They’re not going to have nuclear weapons. I’ve been saying that for 30 years.”
Trump also said the US claims that two American Navy destroyers went through Hormuz Saturday and swept for mines.
The US is establishing dominance over what Iran thought was its “Trump” card, all without firing a shot.
While most of the media have (again) written off Trump for his inflammatory Truth Social posts and unorthodox approach, his attack on Iran is part of his central governing identity: Trump the protector.
The Islamic terrorist regime has threatened and attacked the US for decades. Trump is the first president who is not afraid of them.
Paying the gas price
Of course the Democrats are against him. All their party does now is threaten our safety and security, whether it’s with lax law enforcement, bail reform, decarceration, open borders, or kicking the can down the road on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Their media whisperers, who have been big Iran hawks for years, are now against the war because they hate Trump so much.
As the New York Times’ Tom Friedman told CNN last week, he very much wants “to see Iran defeated militarily because this regime is a terrible regime for its people and the region.”
But “the problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings.”
Iran has been aggressively enriching uranium and ramping up its ability to produce weapons-grade material for a nuclear device, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency and US and Israeli intelligence.
Giving them truckloads of cash, as the Obama geniuses did, hasn’t deterred their Allah-ordained appetite for global nuclear Armageddon. So what would the naysayers prefer?
“You want to see a stock market go down? Let a couple of nuclear bombs be dropped on us,” Trump told Bartiromo when she pressed him on the effects of the war on the price of gas and the domestic economy before the midterms.
Trump said oil prices will go down “eventually,” but not in the short term.
“It might not happen initially, but it’s gonna go down when this is all over,” he said.
In any case, he said the decline in the stock market and uptick in gas prices haven’t been as bad as expected, in a sign that he is more focused on safeguarding America’s security than short-term political advantage.
“The gas hasn’t gone up as much as I thought,” he said. “But regardless, even if it did … You can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump said he told his economic advisers before he launched Operation Epic Fury: “’I’m sorry, fellas, we’re in great shape. We have to go and take a little journey down to Iran, and we have to stop them from having a nuclear weapon.’ They all said, ‘We agree.’ ”
‘Madness in method’
Trump’s closest advisers note he has a high tolerance for risk, which makes for a white-knuckle ride for the rest of us.
His expletive-laden midnight Truth Social posts promising to annihilate a “whole civilization” send the Trump-deranged into paroxysms of rage.
But there is a method to his madness, or as one of the few sensible CNN hosts, Michael Smerconish, put it, “the madness is his method.”
Leaks from inside the Situation Room in the lead-up to the Iran attack show a consultative and serious commander-in-chief, taking legal advice, listening to all his advisers, clear-eyed about Israel’s rosy forecasts of regime change, and then making the tough decision to launch Operation Epic Fury.
There is strategic intent in the president’s actions, along with a gut instinct for psychological conquest that more often than not serves him well, and a sort of genius social intelligence that schoolyard bullies possess of quickly identifying the vulnerability in an opponent.
He is quite happy to play a character and be thought of badly, as long as the US comes out on top in the end.
And he has some wickedly smart advisers sitting around the cabinet table to help him.
This next stage of forcing Iran’s new leaders to see sense in their own self-interest will apply maximum pressure in every dimension to solve a problem that has bedeviled seven presidents.
Godspeed.
https://nypost.com/2026/04/13/opinion/playing-the-trump-card-vs-tehran/
What If the FDA Were Eliminated?
The second Trump administration arrived in the wake of the brutal Covid experience, with the hope of gutting the deep state. A public demand for dramatic reform of oppressive government agencies – and the industries that influence them – was on the docket.
Reform efforts, however, have been met with frustration. The entire machinery is set up to resist the influence of a politically hostile takeover. For example, Moderna, the company tasked with the development of mRNA shots for Covid, has been given the green light to further develop the technology for a flu shot, among other grave disappointments.
The operations of the FDA have been pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, the efforts are directed toward better efficacy and safety testing, obviously in light of the disastrous experiment with mRNA shots rolled out to inoculate the population. The resulting injury and death is a scandal for the ages. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies hoped for speedier approvals and less red tape, consistent with Republican demands for decades.
It’s the same with food. The HHS has prioritized healthier real food instead of decades of subsidies for highly processed, nutrient-barren junk food designed to use up surplus grains that have been subsidized since the early 1970s. Americans meanwhile assume – thanks to the FDA and the Department of Agriculture – that anything for sale for people or animals has surely passed some kind of safety and health standards, which is far from true.
A worthy thought experiment: how would drug approvals and food safety be managed in the absence of such government agencies? The thesis: the free and competitive marketplace would likely be far more strict and exacting than these government agencies. Private solutions would emerge as the standard bearers of approvals, in a way similar to how the private Underwriters Laboratory (founded 1894) codifies the safety of appliances, the Better Business Bureau (founded 1912) polices fraud in business, and actuaries in many sectors assess and price risk.
Anyone in a free market can sell anything. Doing so profitably over the long term and earning consumer trust is an entirely different matter. Markets have their own way of regulating safety, efficacy, and quality, often in ways that are more strict than government agencies have traditionally permissioned.
Let’s look at the history.
Vaccines and drugs were the first two consumer products in American history to be regulated by government agencies. The Biologics Control Act of 1902 regulated the production and sale of biological products, specifically vaccines, serums, antitoxins, and similar items. It required annual licensing of manufacturers, facility inspections, supervision by a scientist, and proper labeling (including expiration dates).
This Congressional action came directly in response to the wave of vaccine injuries and death in 1901. A diphtheria antitoxin in St. Louis killed 13 children, while a contaminated smallpox vaccine in Camden, New Jersey, killed 9 more. Crucially, these tragedies gained public attention through media amplification whereas most vaccine injury remains a private and unpublicized matter. The public was outraged in part because it confirmed widespread suspicion of these products born of long experience.
The industry was clearly in deep trouble. It lobbied for the 1902 law to shore up confidence in a manner consistent with its efforts before and since.
As historian Terry S. Coleman points out, “the 1902 Act was an initiative of the large biologics manufacturers,” with the help of the American Medical Association and led by Parke-Davis, which was acquired in 1970 by Warner-Lambert and again by Pfizer In 2000. “It is impossible to disentangle the desire for strict regulations to boost public confidence in biologics,” he writes, “from the desire for such regulations to eliminate competitors.”
Thus did the creation of the agency formed by the Congressional action (the Hygienic Laboratory, part of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, under the Treasury Department, and later to become the National Institutes of Health) served to create a private cartel of drug and vaccine manufacturers, crowding out private solutions and disabling the normal market-based rule of caveat emptor or buyer beware.
This is exactly what the biggest players in the industry intended. It was a brilliant strategy. Pretend to be deeply vexed by a government crackdown while pulling the strings behind the scenes of a new agency that the public trusts more than the industry. This was not only the birth of a new path toward public management of this one industry; it was the origin of the regulatory state itself insofar as it intervenes directly in the consumer marketplace.
Four years later, the meatpacking industry was in big trouble from the popular book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906). The expose caused a collapse in the sales of the processing and canning industry as the public reverted back to trusting only local food and onsite processing from farmers. A powerful industry needed to do something.
The meatpacking industry took a cue from the vaccine industry and pushed for regulation. The result was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. It targeted adulterated or misbranded foods and drugs in interstate commerce. All evidence suggests that meatpacking became less safe as a result. The industry faced higher compliance costs that squeezed out smaller competitors and less stringent safety standards, while gaining public confidence.
These two acts of Congress became the foundation of what became the Food and Drug Administration, which is tasked with investigating and approving products for their safety and effectiveness. Crucially, industry has been the controlling force from the beginning, the very reason the agency exists. The point was not to protect the public but to protect the largest firms within their respective industries.
The route by which this happened is rather circuitous. The industries went to government and pleaded to be regulated, thus shoring up market position in two directions: increasing costs for upstart firms and disabling public incredulity toward the safety and efficacy of their products.
Today, people talk about industry capture of agencies but this is probably not the right term. The agencies were formed out of the pleas of industry. This is not just true for food and drugs but also for banking, transportation, industry structure, and communications technology, as Gabriel Kolko has demonstrated in his sweeping study of the Progressive Era.
It’s true that these historical facts are hardly understood at all, even by economic historians. This is why we need the entire history of the modern regulatory state rewritten and reconceptualized without romantic delusions about good government actors seeking the well-being of the public.
This historical and present reality poses a serious dilemma for reformers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who have pledged to eliminate the corrupt relationship between industry and government and rid the agencies of conflicts of interest. The agencies themselves were founded in conflicts of interest. An attempt to gut them would turn them into something they have never been.
Now to the original question: what would regulate these industries if the FDA were not around at all? In electronics and business quality, we find the answer. These two industries face strict control emerging organically from consumer demand alone.
Institutions like Underwriters Laboratory and the Better Business Bureau are titans in these sectors with no assistance from government. User ratings emerging in the digital era have a vast impact on sales success, as any Amazon seller can tell you. And in industries like sports, household construction, and driving skill, private insurers exercise a dominant influence through financial carrots and sticks, as directed by actuaries assessing risks.
The very existence of the FDA has crowded out such elaborate and complex systems in the case of food and drugs, which is precisely why their safety and efficacy is the subject of such huge public controversy.
In fact, if you look at the Covid shots alone, consider that no company operating within a market framework could ever have gotten away with such widespread distribution of such ineffective, unsafe, and largely unnecessary products, which were mislabeled as vaccines from the beginning. Not only would a private rating agency decline to approve them, the imposition of normal liability standards would have made insuring the manufacturers and distributors completely unaffordable.
The vaccine industry even from its inception has relied on disabling market forces via a range of interventions: zero-priced distribution, wartime inoculation of soldiers, legalized and court-imposed mandates, exclusions of refuseniks from education and professional life, subsidies, patent sharing with agencies, liability indemnifications, and finally invoking emergency needs to bypass normal standards of safety.
Given all of this, we have no idea what the status of these products would be in a normal market environment. Maybe the industry would not even be financially viable, which is precisely why the industry has built such a powerful lobbying machine. Indeed this was the industry claim when it won its liability shield in 1986: it said it would otherwise face complete bankruptcy.
It’s the same with food. What began with the meatpackers has extended to every other food source. The New Deal imposed a central-planning apparatus to keep prices high via output controls and even mandates to plow up crops to take them off the market. Wartime price controls and rationing redirected production energies away from whole foods toward industrialized substitutes. And the huge push of the 1970s for maximum output started the trend away from local and small farmers toward land consolidation and overproduction of grains. This is also the period when mass use of chemical herbicides and fertilizers came into common use.
All the while, the public was blindsided because government agencies continually assured us that all was well. These products are safe and nutritious. Absent such impositions, regulations, subsidies, and indemnifications, the sectors of food and drugs generally would operate very differently.
Today there are many efforts on the part of nonprofits working to educate the public on many topics related to individual and public health. They work at cross purposes with these agencies that have worked to foist onto the markets what the market would have otherwise been inclined to either filter out, deprecate, or reject entirely.
Could we do without the FDA? We would likely be far better off.
For more on the ways that government intervention reduces market-based incredulity while subsidizing fraud, ill health, dangerous products, and lies, see my interview with Stephan Kinsella.
Join the conversation:
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original Brownstone Institute Article and Author.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)