When lawmakers prescribe dogma instead of diagnosis, society bears the consequences
Imagine a world where pharmaceutical companies are free to concoct and distribute medicines without trials, without regulation, and without any obligation to demonstrate effectiveness. Imagine medicine not as a response to diagnosis, but as a ritual — inherited, unverifiable, and revered. This is the state of our legislatures today. They prescribe policy as if through incantation, manufacture laws with no requirement of empirical grounding, and often medicate society’s disorders with substances drawn from centuries-old dogmas.
This is not governance. It is malpractice.
The time has come to rethink legislatures as pharmaceutical enterprises. Their fundamental responsibility is to diagnose public disorders — war, inequality, climate crisis, misinformation, corruption — and formulate remedies in the form of law. Just as medicine is meant to cure disease and restore biological equilibrium, legislation is meant to restore social order and institutional balance. It should be rational, iterative, and adaptive.
Yet today’s legislatures — from democracies to autocracies, from East to West, from North to South— operate without this scientific rigor. They prescribe without diagnosis. They legislate without trials. They enact without feedback. And most dangerously, they often relapse into religious or ideological thinking, deploying laws that are not medicine at all, but rather toxins dressed as therapy.
Across time and geography, law has functioned as society’s medicine. In the absence of states, religious and moral codes were our first attempts at social healing. In early human societies, conflict resolution was governed by sacred texts, mythic traditions, and the authority of tribal elders. These codes—whether Vedic, Islamic, Christian, or indigenous—provided structure, identity, and meaning. But they were also deeply imprecise. Like herbal or homeopathic remedies, they offered symbolic comfort rather than measurable cure. They soothed symptoms, but rarely addressed systemic causes.
When the state emerged, it centralized the power to legislate. Kings became compounders-in-chief—making and administering laws unilaterally. This monopoly had its own pathologies: arbitrary enforcement, repression, and feudal interest. The democratic project—culminating in parliaments, assemblies, and congresses—sought to separate the making of law from its enforcement. In theory, this division of powers was meant to create space for rational, deliberative lawmaking: a forum where society’s ailments could be debated, diagnosed, and treated with precision.
But this promise has not been kept.
Today, many legislatures continue to legislate like pre-modern apothecaries. In large parts of the world, they defer to sacred texts, transforming ancient moral codes into statutory obligations. Pakistan’s Parliament routinely invokes Sharia. India’s ruling party frames legislation through Hindu-nationalist doctrine. Israel juggles civil law with Torah-derived principles. Even in the United States, religious lobbyists influence bills on gender, education, and reproductive health. This isn’t legislation. It’s theology with bureaucratic stationery.
But the crisis runs deeper.
Even where law is formally secular, legislatures often operate without diagnosis. Bills are passed not in response to data, but to pressure. Lobbyists whisper. Headlines dictate urgency. Elections warp timelines. Populism distorts intent. The result is legislative inflation: more laws, weaker outcomes, mounting contradictions.
No modern pharmaceutical system would survive such recklessness. Medicine demands diagnosis, clinical trials, peer review, regulation, and post-treatment monitoring. If a drug causes harm, it is recalled. If its effectiveness is unclear, it is investigated. If a company fakes research, it is prosecuted. Why then is the law exempt from this rigor?
In fact, law is far more dangerous than medicine. A drug may harm the individual. A misguided law can destabilize an entire society.
Take anti-terrorism laws. In many countries, they were passed swiftly after attacks—often under emotional duress, with minimal review. Years later, studies revealed these laws disproportionately targeted minorities, criminalized dissent, and empowered surveillance without improving actual security outcomes.
Or consider drug policy. Legislatures criminalized entire communities based on outdated fears, ignoring research on harm reduction, addiction, and mental health. Billions were spent. Millions were incarcerated. Public health outcomes worsened. Who bears responsibility for this legislative malpractice?
And yet, no legislative body is formally held to account. There is no legislative equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration. No global standard for peer-reviewed policy. No mandatory evaluation for laws passed in haste or on ideological grounds.
This must change.
If legislatures are to function as the pharmaceutical arms of the democratic state, they must adopt scientific and institutional safeguards:
- Legislation must be evidence-based. Every bill should include a diagnostic assessment: What problem does it solve? What are its causes? What alternative approaches exist? What empirical data supports this intervention?
- Laws must undergo pilot testing and review. Just as new drugs are tested in phases, major legislation should be implemented in trial jurisdictions or reviewed against simulations. Unexpected consequences must be documented and addressed.
- Independent policy review boards must be created. These should include economists, public health experts, sociologists, legal scholars, and affected communities. Their role: to review the potential impacts of legislation before and after passage.
- Sunset clauses and built-in audits must be standard. Every law should include a timeline for mandatory review. If it fails to meet its objectives or produces harm, it must be amended or repealed.
- Religious and ideological lawmaking must be flagged. Legislatures in pluralist societies must be constitutionally barred from enacting laws based solely on theological doctrine. Faith can inform conscience—not statute.
- Global certification of legislative quality should be introduced. Just as financial institutions receive credit ratings, legislatures should be evaluated on transparency, accountability, effectiveness, and empirical grounding. Poorly performing legislatures should face consequences: suspension from international democratic forums, disqualification from governance partnerships, and limitations in inter-parliamentary engagement.
This is not utopian. It is survival.
In a world of climate breakdown, AI disruption, rising inequality, and creeping authoritarianism, the cost of bad law has never been higher. Parliaments that legislate without science are no better than quacks with scalpels. They invite revolt, radicalization, and institutional decay.
And the public knows it. Trust in legislative institutions is plummeting across the globe. Voter turnout is down. Young people are disengaging. Many citizens no longer believe that laws are made for their benefit—or based on reason. Instead, they see performance, ideology, and inertia.
This crisis of trust is not a communication failure. It is a performance failure. The cure is not public relations—it is reform.
It is time to re-medicalize our understanding of the legislature. To treat lawmaking as a science of collective well-being, not a pulpit for moral crusades. To remind lawmakers that their bills are not symbols, but treatments. They will succeed or fail. They will heal, or harm.
And just like medicine, legislation must be grounded in humility. No law is perfect. Every treatment has side effects. But if we test, monitor, and revise—if we build institutions of legislative oversight that are credible and independent—we can restore the public’s trust in the law.