'BUYER NEED NOT BEWARE'

In Public, doctors kept in dark on drugs' effects (Feb. 19), Mindelle
Jacobs reminds us that Canadians have been encouraged to adopt the maxim
"buyer need not beware" because we believed Health Canada was protecting
consumers. That vested interests like pharmaceutical corporations would
take advantage of this kind of state paternalism was predictable.

Canadians must end their drug infantilism by taking back our natural right
to drugs and assuming the responsibility to inform ourselves. Simply put,
we must adopt the ancient Roman code of caveat emptor (buyer beware) when
it comes to health services. Free-market competition is the only way to
keep any businessman honest.

Chris Buors

Libertarian Party of Manitoba

Winnipeg

(We should know what we put into our bodies.)