Here’s a modest proposal: All legislators who support the Trump administration’s slashing of environmental and public health regulations henceforth shall be required to live in districts with: no regulation of air, water, or soil pollution; no oversight of food production, including testing of animals and processed food for microbial or other contamination, and no sales permitted of any food from other regions where such testing is permitted; no access to drugs that are adequately tested for safety as well as efficacy; no limits on automobile speed or access to guns; and no staffing of hospitals or community health centers by immigrant physicians.
They must also decide which two regulations that affect the safety of their district’s air, food, and water must be rescinded in order to enact regulations to protect themselves from a new hazard discovered in their district.
After all, if such conditions are good enough for everyone else, they are perfect for the politicians who propose and enforce them.
The writer is a professor of social epidemiology in the department of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.