This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 12, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Science advances one funeral at a time.

It's a grim thought, but one that ought to humble even the most rigorous

scientists. So how do we begin to break down the scientific gatekeeping that

has defined the avenues of acceptable inquiry as we Americans try to manage our own health.

Cato's Jeff Singer comments.

When I was on my honeymoon, my wife and I were in Vietnam and I was feeling very sick. I had this weird skin rash and looked up a bunch of options for medicines that I could buy to deal with it and we found one that was available at a

I want to say pharmacy yes but also it was something like a CVS but also like a 7-Eleven and bought a drug there that took

care of it within hours and I felt fine.

And one thing we realized is that drug's not available in the US at all under any circumstances or Europe or anywhere or a bunch of other places and our conclusion was you know that

when we looked up like what the effects of the drug were and it wasn't super happy with what might have been the side effects of this drug but I was darn lucky to have it at the time that I was able to access it and we bought it over the counter. It was a very simple thing to do.

My wife is maybe a little more conscientious than most when it comes to looking up what drugs do but it is at least a

little bristling to come back to the US and realize that something that you had

success with simply not available.

Well that's an interesting story because that whatever that drug was that obviously worked

and that you had every right to take anyway because you have the right to self-medicate.

Had you found out the name of it and suggested it in this country, the likely it is

you would have been dismissed as an uncredentialed person who's recommending some fringe

therapeutic that is not approved by the FDA or the public health authorities and if you persist at it you'll just be

completely mocked and shunned which is the phenomenon we see all too often today

and is standing in a way of scientific advance.

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