Tim Lynch was right. Dallas Buyers Club is a terrific movie with a strong libertarian message about self-help, entrepreneurship, overbearing and even lethal regulation, and social tolerance. Matthew McConaughey, almost unrecognizable after losing 40 pounds, plays Ron Woodroof, a homophobic electrician in 1985 who learns he has AIDS and has 30 days to live. There’s lots of strong language in his denunciation of the kinds of people who get AIDS, which he certainly is not. But after doing some research, he asks his doctor for AZT, the only drug for HIV/AIDS then available, but he wasn’t eligible for the trials then in process. He turns to the black market, finds his way to Mexico, encounters a doctor who tells him that AZT is toxic and that there are better vitamins and drugs, and beats his original prognosis. As it occurs to him that there are plenty of other people in Dallas who could use these drugs, he sees an opportunity to make some money — if he can only learn to deal with gay people.

Soon he’s setting up a “buyers club,” in an attempt to evade FDA regulations on selling illegal or non-approved drugs. He’s got customers — oops, potential members — lining up. He’s on planes to Japan and Amsterdam to get drugs not available in the United States. And at every turn he’s impeded and harassed by the FDA, which insists that people with terminal illnesses just accept their fate. Can’t have them taking drugs that might be dangerous! You’ll be surprised to see how many armed FDA agents it takes to raid a storefront clinic operated by two dying men.

Here’s a Cato study on AIDS and the FDA from 1986. Here’s the original 1992 magazine story about the Dallas Buyers Club, published just before Ron Woodroof died.

Go see Dallas Buyers Club.