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(The Center Square) – Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy’s leadership, the Food and Drug Administration has announced that a proposed rule is on the way to crack down on pharmaceutical advertising in the United States. While concerns about the influence of Big Pharma are understandable, conservatives should be wary of the precedent such actions would set.
If we have learned anything from the past several years, it is that giving government more power to control medical information is a dangerous game, one that rarely ends well for truth, transparency or patient autonomy.
One just needs to look at the next-level arrogance and damning evidence exposed in the diaries and testimony of former Chief Medical Advisor to the President Dr Anthony Fauci. He was obsessed with his notoriety and fame with little concern for the suffering of the American people.
During the COVID-19 era, many of us were deeply frustrated – and rightly so – by how Fauci and other public health authorities shaped, and at times distorted, public information. “Science” and data were used to compel behavior. I wrote then about my 9-year-old daughter being required to wear a mask while playing tennis in 98-degree heat. Americans were told certain views were “misinformation,” only to later see those same positions validated or at least seriously debated. Restrictions on personal liberty were defended with selective or constantly “evolving” science, leading to a profound loss of trust in public health institutions.
We were also troubled when figures like Rachel Levine and others in the Biden administration appeared to politicize healthcare in entirely new ways, particularly on issues like gender medicine. The promotion of puberty blockers and other interventions for minors was often framed as settled science, even as serious questions remained about long-term effects and ethical implications. Many Americans felt that dissenting voices were silenced and that government officials were putting their thumbs on the scale to promote a specific ideological agenda.
In both of these cases, government positioned itself as the arbiter of information, determining what discourse was allowed and what information families should be able to access as they made decisions.
That experience should give us pause now.
Efforts to restrict pharmaceutical advertising may be framed as consumer protection, but they risk repeating the same mistakes from a different political direction. When the government decides what information Americans can or cannot see about medical treatments, it inevitably becomes an arbiter of truth.
As we have seen, that authority is too easily influenced by politics, ideology, and shifting narratives.
Pharmaceutical advertising, for all its flaws, serves an important function. It informs patients about treatment options they may not otherwise know exist. For individuals suffering from chronic or underdiagnosed conditions, these ads can be the first step toward seeking care. They empower patients to ask questions, advocate for themselves, and explore therapies that may improve or even save their lives.
Conservatives have long championed free markets and free speech, particularly when it comes to the flow of information. We have correctly argued that individuals, not bureaucrats, are best positioned to make decisions about their own lives when given access to accurate information. To now endorse sweeping restrictions on pharmaceutical advertising would be to abandon that principle.
Moreover, such a move risks opening the door to further government control over medical communication. If ads for FDA-approved drugs can be curtailed today, what stops future administrations from limiting other forms of medical speech tomorrow? What happens when the same machinery is used to suppress viewpoints or treatments that fall out of political favor?
We should not forget how quickly “misinformation” became a catch-all label during the pandemic, often applied to ideas that simply challenged prevailing orthodoxy. Do we really want to empower the same system to decide which medical messages Americans are allowed to hear?
The lesson of the past few years is not that we need more centralized control over healthcare information. It is that we need less, paired with greater transparency, accountability, and respect for individual judgment.
Conservatives were right to push back when government officials politicized science and restricted debate. We should be equally cautious now. Limiting pharmaceutical advertising may sound appealing in theory, but in practice it risks undermining the very freedoms we have fought to protect.
In the end, the question is simple. Do we trust Americans to make informed decisions about their health, or do we trust the government to decide for them?
We should choose wisely.
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