{"id":5028,"date":"2020-02-29T12:49:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-29T17:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/?p=5028"},"modified":"2020-02-29T12:49:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-29T17:49:17","slug":"is-self-medication-a-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/2020\/02\/29\/is-self-medication-a-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Self-Medication a Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reading Flanigan\u2019s introduction to her paper, I was pretty adamant that I was going to disagree with her. The idea of giving people free access to all prescription drugs, including the opioids that have sparked an enormous addiction epidemic and other prescription drugs like Adderall that are frequently taken without prescription, seemed ridiculous to me. The idea that people know what drugs are best for them without physician advice seemed laughable. There\u2019s a reason people attend medical school and residency and every other step along the way that puts them in a position to prescribe these powerful and sometimes addictive drugs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But as much as I didn\u2019t want to believe it, Flanigan made some very good points. Our whole medical system is based on the principle of non-paternalism, with the sharp exception of drug regulation. Everything else &#8211; most notably the Doctrine of Informed Consent &#8211; is based on the principle that patients have a right to make the decision they deem best for them, so her question of why that right suddenly stops with drugs is very valid. Flanigan also notes that a reason people take the opiates or other addictive drugs in the first place is because they assume they\u2019re safe since a doctor prescribed them, even though there are serious risks associated with those substances. Also, countries that don\u2019t have enforced drug regulation actually show lower mortality rates because patients can access medicines they need without restriction. While this idea of self-medication generally goes against everything I thought I believed, I have to agree that Flanigan made a strong case. She also provided useful solutions and alternatives to opposing beliefs. It was also interesting to see her use the same ethical argument forms like normative and deontic that we\u2019re learning about in class and see that they have very real uses and applications. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading Flanigan\u2019s introduction to her paper, I was pretty adamant that I was going to disagree with her. The idea of giving people free access to all prescription drugs, including the opioids that have sparked an enormous addiction epidemic and other prescription drugs like Adderall that are frequently taken without prescription, seemed ridiculous to me. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}