You might have guessed I usually take the position that the government is perhaps the most incompetent of all possible quacks. If the gov wasn't hogging the road, some other institutions would probably grow and become influential in the sunlight of freedom.
Doctors having differing views could/would form associations called "(Alternative Cancer Therapy of your choice) Association A" through "Z", or "(Pharmaceutical Cartel of your choice) Association A" through "Z", and such, and then some allegedly independent experts would form rating services and information services for enquiring minds. It would probably all be promoted with yellow journalistic embellishments and tactics that'd make Tammany Hall look respectable. And as freaking crazy as all that would be, I'd thread my way through all the crap and maybe make a choice of my own for some reason or another. At least there would be no shortage of stuff we could throw down that blind alley hoping to hit the screeching cat we call cancer.
But maybe the level of discourse would rise above that mob of medicine men hawking their wares with unrestrained rhetoric and reason, and maybe people would actually come around to wanting to make responsible well-researched decisions for themselves. Maybe.
And maybe there'd still be a lot of One Brows who just want the professionals to create their own caste system for their own reasons, and lay out the plan for all mankind backed up with government authority and force, such that we would have a sort of Medical Court where all treatments would be ordered and obeyed unless some wayward soul simply preferred to die untreated in some Jail of Final Recourse. And knowing the way folks think the government should behave, the compliant majority would problably consider it right to just shoot noncompliants on the spot. Oh, you don't think that's a fair characterization of democracy unfettered by technicalities or procedural dances around individual rights? Then why do we need laws to make us all comply, like Obamacare? Fact is, if we accept the government as allegedly "our" agent in taxing, legislating, spending and enforcing, once the government is making all our decisions it's just natural for mangers to standardize every possible "choice". If there's a dollar's difference in the cost between treatment A and treatment B, it would be plainly uneconomical for the government to pay unequally for treatments of the same illness.
As much as I hate to say so, OB has a part of the truth. A lot of professionals are conscientious, if captive to an orthodoxy. Including some scientists doing research. And they have been taught well to use properly equivocal language in dealing with statistical probabilities as shattered people shuffle through their offices looking for hope, and grasping at straws, and keeping a weather eye out for medical malpractice claims that could turn the loss of loved one into a financial triumph for the survivors. . . .or, in deference to the tort lawyers out there, at least restore some part of the life value lost to those most directly affected.
Change doesn't come easily to human beings or human institutions, and what we get in terms of medical "practice" has millions of ties right back to the way we are, individually and collectively. Still, we do have hope in our established institutions because of the people who do care for people, and who do act ethically and who do try to be honest, and who do care for truth. Our technologies and methodogies do get better over time. The way we treat cancer today is significantly better than the way it was done forty, or twenty, or ten years ago.
But before I would really ask the government to "legalize" any kind of treatment, I'd be asking "why bother?". Don't give the government those airs in the first place. Our professional people will still do their best, according to their nature and tendencies, towards achieving success in their lines of specialties, even without a government looking over their shoulders, and issuing licenses or badges, or federal agency approvals. Yet I have to admit to the OBs of the world that federal agency oversight does cull out a lot of sheer nonsense, if it does sometimes just present an absolute barrier to some things that could have helped. Not a lot of people out there want to put out the effort to make that judgment for themselves. And those people are the reason why we have a lot of government. And those people are insisting that I can't make that judgment for myself.
And so, I ask, by what right do you claim that power over me?
