To the Editor:

Re: “Face to Face with the Fountain of Youth,” Opinion, Feb. 6

Alex Kantrowitz’s article regarding Resveratrol treats as an acceptable outcome one of the most reprehensible ideas I have heard in a long while: that the FDA might act in blatant contempt for the freedom of the people it supposedly serves by banning a potentially miraculous drug — not because it causes adverse side effects to the patient, but because of the political ramifications of allowing Americans to live longer than they otherwise might. How would any of us react upon being told, “Yes, there is a drug that could add 30 years to your life, and yes, you could afford it, but frankly, the government has no use for you anymore. Have a nice death.”? Forbidding the purchase of a life-extending substance that need harm no one in the absence of the government’s overloaded entitlement programs is tantamount to murder, and is ethically no different from the dystopia depicted in the novel Logan’s Run.

The principles of limited government are hardly in vogue these days, but please consider this: If a government can claim to control the maximum age its citizens are allowed to reach, is there any power that it does not have? What will stop such a government from declaring that anti-cancer medications are causing people to live too long and put too much strain on the system? What will stop it from applying the same logic to AZT? To penicillin? Alas, this is the true face of socialized medicine, as is true of socialism in general: The individual must be sacrificed to the will of the collective. Of course, when the government interferes in medicine, it’s not just your money on the line. It’s your life.

Brendan McCauley ’11