I just sent this letter to the editor of the Washington Post:

The lack of outrage about China’s horrific execution of a corrupt food and drug regulator in a recent editorial [“Rough Justice,” July 14] was itself outrageous.

Zheng Xiaoyu was put to death for (allegedly) taking bribes that enabled unsafe products to reach the market. The death toll thus far is hundreds of lives lost in China and Panama.

Dr. David A. Kessler was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1991 through 1996. In 1988, researchers at Harvard University had demonstrated that widespread use of aspirin at the onset of a heart attack and daily for 30 days afterward could save 5,000 lives per year in the United States. Yet Dr. Kessler’s FDA refused to let aspirin manufacturers advertise that extremely important information until 1996. That policy resulted in as many as 30,000 unnecessary deaths during Dr. Kessler’s tenure. No one has ever accused Dr. Kessler of taking bribes. But he surely benefited personally from his position and from his aggressive regulatory policies, going on to be named dean of Yale University’s medical school.

If Dr. Kessler’s political opponents in the U.S. government had put Dr. Kessler to death for his actions as a regulator, I think the Post would denounce his execution as barbaric. But then why be so blithe about an equally barbaric execution in China?

I’m used to people valuing the lives of the FDA’s Type I victims more than the lives of its Type II victims. But valuing the lives of Type I victims more than the lives of the regulators themselves is a new one by me.