In both of our readings for today, I really enjoyed seeing how strong arguments can change your perspective on a topic. They served as a good model for my own work and helped me to understand many of the tools that we are learning about in class. Flanigan starts her argument by presenting the idea that we should not have prescription drugs and explaining the DIC (doctrine of informed consent). She makes the point that this doctrine allows people, among other things, to make decisions about what medical care they receive; essentially, it gives them the authority to say they do not want medical treatment. By allowing patients to refuse treatment, it acknowledges that patients have the right to think about their “overall well-being” not just their “medical well-being.” She then explains that “current restrictions on pharmaceuticals are designed to promote patients’ health, but not their overall well-being. For this reason, a prescription drug system is incompatible with this justification for informed consent” (Flanigan 582). She is able to show hypocrisy within our doctrines of medicine and uses this to prove her point.

While I found her proposal extremely interesting, I personally had trouble accepting it. In particular, it was thought-provoking to read her point about Adderall on college campuses. Medically speaking, there are some people that need it more than others because of various disorders. However, there is definitely a stigma in society today that adderall and similar drugs are overprescribed and how this can have negative benefits. People who take adderall and do not need to can have various bad symptoms such as: sleeping problems, anxiety, weight loss and many more. Yes, there is no question that they can help all students in the moment. But, to say that they are simply good because they can be of temporary help neglects looking at the big picture. Personally, I believe that if adderall was legalized, it would make it extremely more common and create an even greater dependance by a larger amount of students. This would inherently violate Flanigan’s wish to create a greater “overall well-being.”

After reading Hidalgo’s piece, I really started to think about some of our class discussions. One of the points we have talked about a lot is that if people cannot agree on a value theory (moral belief), then it will be hard to even have the argument. I think this is extremely important for understanding his work. He  starts by talking about the “value of freedom of movement”. If people have different moral expectations, then it is really hard to make progress. Morals can sometimes be inherent because of who we are, and it makes arguments like his extremely divisive. In my mind, much of his argument rests on the idea of doing as little harm as possible. But, in every situation, there are going to be people who are harmed at the expense of others. He urges the public that it should be permissible to disobey laws if it means stopping harm (by helping immigrants). At the same time, we have laws in place to hopefully create good and help society to be fair. Relying on value theories means people can easily disagree, and it may be hard to change their minds.

While I was not completely convinced by either argument, it made me understand how complicated it can be to make such vast claims. Moral arguments are tricky, but are relevant to countless problems that exist in the world today. I think that both authors do a great job in connecting their ideas. Both were able to make me question some of my previous thoughts which actually can be extremely powerful.