The right to make one’s medical decisions is a fundamental human right. Taking health care rights seriously means recognizing that consumers have a right to choose which medical products they use and that government has no right to stand in their way.

From the moment Ugur Sahin and his colleagues developed the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in January 2020, they and consumers have had the right to sell and buy it, so long as both parties agreed to the transaction. When government interferes with that right to voluntary exchange, it interferes with the rights of patients to make their own medical decisions. This fundamental human right to voluntary exchange is all the more important when it involves life-or-death medical decisions.

From mid-January 2020 until December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration violated the rights of the manufacturers and consumers to buy and sell the life-saving Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA only stopped violating those rights when it granted the vaccine an emergency use authorization on December 11, 2020. Under the terms of that authorization, however, the FDA would again begin to violate those rights once the federal government declares this public-health emergency has ended.

Today’s announcement that the FDA has granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is welcome news—but not because government should be in the business of reviewing the safety and efficacy of drugs (it shouldn’t), nor because the FDA has any moral authority (it doesn’t), nor because patients need the FDA’s seal of approval (though some rightly value it). It is welcome news only because it means that once the federal government declares this public-health emergency has ended, the FDA will not automatically resume violating the right of consumers to use this vaccine.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated over and over again that the FDA is a threat to public health.