The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them. —from the memoir of a young girl who grew up in the Soviet Union
In Kenya, the elephant population dropped from 65,000 to 19,000 even though elephant hunting was forbidden. In Zimbabwe, however, natives can claim, or homestead, elephants living on their lands. Natives can legally sell permits to hunt them. Zimbabwe’s elephant population grew from 30,000 to 43,000. People will protect the environment when they own it and profit from it. —Mary J Ruwart
The FDA limits the information that drug companies can share with doctors and consumers. As many as 100,000 Americans died needlessly from heart disease each year that aspirin makers couldn’t advertise aspirin’s role in its prevention. —Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, Healing Our World
We pay 5 times as much for drugs than we should. Because the FDA is blamed when drugs affect some people adversely, the agency drags out the approval process. Drug development time and cost has increased greatly since the early 1960s without any improvement in either efficacy or safety. The true cost, however, is measured in lives, as tens of thousands of people die waiting for the FDA to approve breakthrough drugs. —Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, Healing Our World
Those whose libertarianism is based on utilitarianism are oftentimes willing to sacrifice liberty in a doomed attempt to achieve an important goal. In contrast, those with a moral commitment to liberty are unlikely to betray liberty by endorsing government force. —Ron Paul