Recently a new product, n-acetylcarnosine, has become available to dissolve cataracts without eye surgery, just by instilling it in the form of drops into the eye every day for a few months. This sounds too good to be true, and is based on Russian research which is regarded with skepticism by Western scientists. The FDA, always eager to protect the American medical establishment against innovations which might get in the way of profitable cataract surgery, has recently banned the drug in the U.S., but it can easily be imported from abroad. Since I have developing cataracts because I have to take prednisone for another medical problem, I have been taking three drops of n-acetylcarnosine a day now for the last six months, but have noticed little benefit. Since it is also quite expensive, costing me about $2000 a year, I am considering giving it up, but would like to know about the experience of other people with it.

Ah, Wolfgang, I've spoken to you before. You say the FDA has not approved the drops to protect the medical establishment, but wouldn't it seem that approval was withheld because the drops don't work?

I cannot imagine any freedom more vital to the individual against state interference than the liberty right of everyone to improve his health, treat his disease, or save his life. Yet ironically, in the United States, the country which most touts freedom as its foundational principle, the ability of the citizen to choose his own remedies is severely restricted. Germany, in contrast, introduced the principle of 'freedom of treatment' in the 1930s, so that absolutely anything which the patient and his doctor agreed upon could be tried as a remedy without state interference.

Many promising drugs will take so much time and cost so much money to prove safe and effective by FDA standards that thousands of people will suffer and die before they become avialable. Doesn't it make sense for those people to have a right to try even a remedy unlikely of success rather than accept the certainty of disease and death in some cases? If you were drowning in quicksand, would you want a government engineer to forbid you to reach for the only available branch to pull yourself out because the government was not yet convinced of its safety and effectiveness?

You make a lot of sense; however, the US is a very litigious country. If it turns out a drug produces side effects the drug company didn't mention...wham, a lawsuit. In an ideal world, people would be free to try whatever remedy they wanted and if it made their livers explode, they wouldn't sue.
I haven't researched the drug you mentioned in regard to the FDA, so don't know what the FDA's reasoning is.
The fact that the drops had no effect on your cataracts after six months would suggest that they don't work, although I realize you are a small sample :).

Ding ding ding! KeelaC is right on. Doctors and patients experimenting with drugs is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Lawsuits don't have to be a problem as long as the patients using experimental treatments give their informed consent and sign a waiver.

There is no need for medical freedom to represent a legal problem, since if patients give their informed consent for an experiemental treatment and sign a waiver, the lawsuit problem is over with the stroke of a pen.

Try bilberry. Its a supplement for the eyes. You can find it at any health store.