This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 27th, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's valuable and important for us to be able to know our own status with respect to the virus now spanning the globe.

Cato Senior Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Singer discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing into sharp relief

the fact that people have a right to discover this information,

whether the FDA approves or not.

Just like we assert everyone's fundamental right to self-medicate, which incidentally was asserted by the authors

of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act that created a current FDA regulatory protocol back in the 30s.

We also have the right to test to see what kind of medications we want to give to us.

So if it's basically an extension of a right to life.

If we have a right to live our own lives and we own ourselves, we need to be able to get information

about what we need to do to improve our health, protect our health,

prevent ourselves from dying.

So just as we have the right to give ourselves medications and treatments to prevent ourselves

from getting unhealthy or dying.

We also have the right and the necessity to test to see what we need to give to ourselves if we need to give anything to ourselves.

The current regulatory regime that emanates from Washington basically infringes on that right.

We've been told that we cannot test ourselves until this essential government in Washington DC tells us if they think the

tests we're using is a good test. Now I'm all four wanting to know whether the test I'm about to use is a good test and so if there

are not just the FDA but any other certifying organization,

testing opposition, even write down a consumer

reports, wants to evaluate tests

so that I could have this information. That's something I want so I appreciate that

...