I found Dr. Flanigan’s article extremely insightful about how self-medication should be society’s aim over prescription drug laws. As someone who is a minority and whose race has been historically neglected and exploited by the medical community, the points made in this article did lead me to believe Dr. Flanigan’s ultimate conclusion, which is that prescription drug laws violate patients’ rights to self-medication and that a non-prohibitive drug system should be implemented alongside prescription-grade drugs being made widely available to patients without a physician’s consent or knowledge. I did, though, have doubts about prescription-grade drugs being made available to patients without their physicians’ consent or knowledge. This is because of the high rates of substance abuse in the United States that disproportionately affects some communities more than others, such as Appalachia and low-income persons. In light of this, Dr. Flanigan adds the clause that patients who are informed and freely consent to pursue self-medication over treatment options recommended by their physician essentially waive their rights against any risk or harm done to them through their pursuit of self-medicating activities.

Nonetheless, the ethical arguments Dr. Flanigan uses to support her ultimate conclusion does cause me to wonder how other factors will affect people’s ability to self-medicate. For instance, I believe that Dr. Flanigan wrote this piece under the assumption that people who choose to self-medicate must also have the ability to consistently purchase and access self-medicating products or treatments. Of course, this is a highly idealistic perspective. Our healthcare system in the U.S. is not as effective as other nations’ healthcare systems, such as Canada or Denmark. For years, many individuals, especially if they were minorities, have expressed apprehension over going to the hospital mainly because of the exorbitant fees and insurance costs one could incur from simply being transported to a hospital in an ambulance. In response, these individuals might choose to self-medicate over a physician’s recommended treatment, but what of those who don’t have insurance or are not making a livable wage to support themselves and their families? How will they be able to self-medicate? Who is responsible for regulating the prices of self-medication products and treatments to prevent price gouging among pharmaceutical suppliers?

I took the Disabled/Abled persons implicit bias test in which I had to sort pictures based on whether the individual appeared to be disabled/abled. I also had to sort pictures of disabled/abled individuals to be either good or bad. My results were that I have no preference between Disabled Persons and Abled Persons- which isn’t much of a shock to me. Growing up, I helped my family take care of my great-grandmother, who was disabled. I never viewed her as an inferior human being to more abled-body persons, such as myself. If anything, I held more respect for her being disabled. In high school, I also volunteered a lot with Special Olympics, a non-profit organization committed to supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities. These experiences definitely influenced my mindbugs to not view disabled persons as being somehow less valuable or preferable than abled-persons.  At the end of the day, human life is a human life.

I found the results of Laurie Rudman’s study on how the “presence of implicit gender stereotypes about romance and home, achievement and career, has consequences for the women who hold them” to be intriguing (116). The first finding was that women are less likely to aspire to achieve individual power and status in society if they associate their ideal significant other in life to be a “Prince Charming” (116). The other finding from this study revealed that these self-defeating stereotypes were a contributing factor for why women would forego professional opportunities that could establish their authority and status in society if it meant that they would have to compete for such opportunities with men. Altogether, both conclusions connect back to the idea of dissociation mentioned earlier in the text. Dissociation is essentially the idea that one can hold two mutually inconsistent ideas. Still, while one idea is reflective, the other idea is more automatic and more susceptible to being endorsed without us being aware.

After pondering over Rudman’s study, I wonder how different the results would be if the study subjects remained women. Yet, instead of imagining a life with a Prince Charming, they imagined an ideal life with a Princess Charming? How would this study’s results be different if there were both heterosexual and queer men who participated in this study and were asked to imagine a life with an ideal Prince Charming or an individual of different gender and sexual orientation who possessed the associations of royalty? Questions like these cause me to wonder how the roles of race, gender, and sexuality impact group and power dynamics in the context of leadership- both professionally and socially.

While reading through the various types of moral arguments, I was happy to see some philosophical ideas that I have been studying in my Justice & Civil Society course. For instance, one approach to justice is Utilitarianism, which believes that the happiness and welfare of society should be maximized for all human beings all the time. The consequentialist moral argument supports Utilitarianism because of universalism- the belief held that everyone is equally morally important and that everyone’s intrinsic values, like happiness, are of equal importance. According to the universalistic maximizing consequentialist, it is morally good to produce happiness for everyone globally, holding constant that everyone’s happiness is treated as equally important.

In studying Utilitarianism, I have seen how this philosophical approach to justice affects our moral obligations or viewpoints on things, such as charitable giving and sweatshops. For instance, Utilitarians who believe in Edward Singer’s strong principle would say that you are morally obligated to keep giving to charities and the extreme poor until you are sacrificing something that has comparable moral significance- like your happiness of attending the University of Richmond. In other words, keep giving until the happiness you sacrifice is greater than the happiness the other person would gain if you donated that marginal amount of money to them. Similarly, even though several of us would object to the idea and institution of sweatshops, Utilitarians would advocate for sweatshops to be built and ran in places of the world where they do not exist yet, such as underdeveloped countries like Malawi. Utilitarians believe that sweatshops provide greater happiness to sweatshop workers because if these workers are from underdeveloped countries and are living in extreme poverty, then the opportunity of improving one’s and one’s family’s economic well-being is far more significant than the harsh conditions and work environment that they- sweatshop workers- are subject to.