Overdose

Now comes the news that Richard Epstein has a new book out, Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation. Epstein is a law professor of the libertarian/utilitarian persuasion.

Apparently his book got badly panned in The New Republic, by a Harvard doc.

Epstein has fired back with an online reply, defending his central theses.

In dealing with a longish review, the usual approach of the aggrieved author is to take on only one or two points of the critic, and let the reader draw whatever inferences he or she chooses about those points that were not addressed. The Relman review, however, makes so many instructive errors that a different course seems preferable.

"So many instructive errors." I love that. Funny guy. Jumping to the end:

I can't comment on his medical skills, but as a professor of social medicine, even at Harvard, it would help if Dr. Relman took, for the first time, Economics 101.

Don't bite the invisible hand
Of supply and demand.