Counterargument: imagine if every doctor and crackpot could attempt to sell his 'medicine' to everybody. Imagine you having to pick what works from a zillion possibilities. Imagine your ancestors died because they believed some snake oil salesman.
Imagine if everybody could buy as much penicillin as they wanted. Imagine bacteria getting resistant in 1950 or so, and you getting pneumonia in 1955.
Imagine having something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstilbestrol#DES_daughter... being fairly frequent, and not being able to figure out what is causing it because there are just too many variables involved (the guy selling your medicine may not be able to control the dose good enough, nobody tracks interactions between medicines, etc)
"Imagine you having to pick what works from a zillion possibilities."
But this is precisely what every one of us has to do every day. That's life! Right now, I could drive in an unlimited number of directions, buy ice cream, go to a movie, climb a tree, read a book, run out of the room screaming, etc. There are an infinite number of actions available to me. Solving these kinds of problems is what your brain is for!
No thing in the universe is omniscient: not any group, individual, imaginary deity, etc. Ultimately, there is no reason to trust in anything but your own mind and senses. It's your life, and you have to choose. When people forcibly stop you from doing your own thinking and acting upon it, your life is being stifled: it's less than it could be.
imagine if every doctor and crackpot could attempt to sell his 'medicine' to everybody.
False dichotomy.
Just because we would allow something like that, does not mean there would be no testing, or no government regulated testing and labeling. If you chose you could just stick to the AAA tested stuff. I am not arguing that we ban testing. False choice!
Imagine if everybody could buy as much penicillin as they wanted. Imagine bacteria getting resistant in 1950 or so, and you getting pneumonia in 1955.
Imagine having something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethylstilbestrol#DES_daughter... being fairly frequent, and not being able to figure out what is causing it because there are just too many variables involved (the guy selling your medicine may not be able to control the dose good enough, nobody tracks interactions between medicines, etc)