 You've been counted, Thought Criminal #885723 Write down this number and report to your Kommissar at the nearest railroad station. Don't forget warm clothes and a shovel! |
Posted on 04/21/2007 2:24:32 PM PDT by BlazingArizona
I got 30 Oxycodone after a stingray bite last year. That’s GREAT stuff! I’d EASILY be an addict to that if it were available for pennies OTC.
Prescription drugs are not toys.
They should only be prescribed by experts.
Certain combinations of drugs may interact to cause dire consequences.
The ultra-enlightened ivory-tower wannabe-bureaucrats have already begun floating schemes for mandating maximum sun exposure, maximum meat and dairy consumption, and a host of other bull**** "for our own good" stuff. Take the "obesity epidemic". Marx would blush if he saw some of these proposals - some have floated what are, for all purposes, ration card policies; everyone gets a set amount of "unhealthy" food they can buy every month, with 'fat credits' deducted from a government ID card with purchases, or at your doctor's discretion if you are having specific health problems. And that isn't even the most controlling scheme being considered - think food prescriptions from state health authorities.
Sound outlandish? Ha! Most things currently under the umbrella of involuntary consumer protection would have seemed unthinkable a century ago before the birth of New Deal and Great Society socialist indoctrination. It would seem that abdication of one personal responsibility leads to the acceptance of other personal responsibilities being likewise abdicated. I'd guess that a fair number of sheeple would already support such proposals "for the common good". Given the gradual usurpation of the tenets of Constitutional Republicanism in favor of raw democracy, and, with a bit of global-warming style scaremongering, such nanny-statism will be foisted upon you quicker than a Frenchman can surrender (and the Constitution will be as useful as a pogo stick in quicksand)
Frankly, I think the world could use a lot more natural selection these days. We are much better off when stupidity is painful, when individuals can rise and fall on their own merits without the nanny-state to intervene whenever they make a boo-boo. It is incredible that we cannot trust morons individually to look after themselves, but we trust a herd of morons to collectively decide what is best for everyone.
Hmm. If you are not trained to do that task, you might unnecessarily endanger her. But still, if you are willing to be prosecuted for murder or attempted murder if you screw up, and she is willing to sign a contract indicating that she understands you are not trained for the task, then go right ahead I say.
Informed consent and acceptance of the consequences, that’s all I really ask.
BTW, I would allow a drug company to not sell pills to you. As a private company, I think they have a right to set the rules by which their product can be purchased.
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You've been counted, Thought Criminal #885723 Write down this number and report to your Kommissar at the nearest railroad station. Don't forget warm clothes and a shovel! |
Americans are usually well educated. Those very sick often research their illness and perhaps know it better than a physician. In Mexico, the uneducated masses can buy medications (that are only available by prescription in the USA) from the local pharmacy without a doctor’s perscription. Why can’t we? I believe that all too often regulations to protect us are really regulations to protect someone’s monopoly so that they can take home a big pay check. As medicine becomes less personal, I’d welcome the opportunity to play a larger role in my own health.
I think that’s a gross misunderstanding of why regulate. Almost everyone would personally like to the freedom to make all decisions for ourselves in this society. But we generally abdicate authority because we believe that “this society” won’t exist without specialization of that authority. Sure, there’re positives with radical deregulation, but we suspect they’d be overshadowed by the negatives. We accomplish great things through specialization and investment that relies on confidence in the quality and stability of our environment (goods, institutions and society). We believe people would be inordinately distracted by having to investigate the quality of everything they put into their mouth or buy, fending off legalized assaults from opportunists of ever increasing sophistication, and we believe our society is stronger and function better farming much of that to specialists.
Should that be a government roll or privatized? I can go either way, but few are going to be persuaded that we’ll benefit from radical deregulation in hope that someone fills the gap before our productivity, health and society goes to crap. We blow the world away living a better life than any people in history. Tossing out our system wholesales will never get traction.
It need not be involuntary. If someone wants to opt into (or out of - that is almost as good) such protection rackets, let them. I see no reason to deny people voluntary collectivization. My problem is with the involuntary extension.
Come on, 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. That's 60 million people. They will go look for the drug that they saw a commercial for on the idiot box, find it - or another with a similar sounding name - take it and make themselves sicker.
If I've learned anything the past couple of decades, it's that it only takes three or four idiots to bring the government in with a reactionary law to screw everyone else. With 60 million idiots potentially poisoning themselves, self medication wouldn't last a week.
Voluntary means non-existent, like having a constitution which explicitly states it's just a guideline, still just as radical a proposal as elimination, and just as likely to win acceptance.
IIRC, you didn’t have to have a doctor’s note to buy pharmaceuticals until the mid-1950s.
Then it's YOUR problem. Greenwald is not advocating that people switch to self-medication; what he's criticizing is that medical prescriptions alone have the full force of law, while other kinds of expert advice - your lawyer, investment counselor, etc. - can be followed optionally. Greenwald's position is that dispensing by prescription should be mandatory only in cases where self-medication would create a public health problem, such as use of antibiotics that lead to bacterial resistance.
As it stands now, taking prescription medication without an explicit prescription leads to police action and jail time. In some cases, it is a medication that was available next to the aspirin or whey powder on Tuesday, and then forever after Wednesday requires a doctor's prescription to obtain. This regulatory framework is not a service we should be altogether thankful for. Industry watchdogs need not be consumer watchdogs.
And much of the regulations are not in place to protect us. Let me give you one example from Canada. L-Carnitine, a non-essential amino acid that is contained in all meat, was once available in pill and powder forms right off the shelf in health food stores and grocery stores. In 2002, a pharmaceutical company introduced a patented form of L-Carnitine (Carnitore). What followed was an example of reverse regulatory capture - the company released a study it funded showing that high doses of L-Carnitine (basically 400 grams of pills, 2 commercial bottles worth) are dangerous. Health Canada derived from that study a need to regulate L-Carnitine, henceforth making it available only by prescription. Because of the vagaries of patent law, the previous L-Carnitine manufacturers were blocked from releasing viable prescription forms of L-Carnitine; only one company now sells this simple amino acid in Canada. You can still find it at GNC and other stores in the US (for now).
We aren't the ones being protected.
It's like this: when I pay for investment advice, I generally follow the recommendations of the person for whose expertise I have paid. Ditto with my doctors. But if I for any reason don't like one of the stocks my investment man recommends, I'm free to invest in something different. The healthcare industry, on the other hand, has acquired unique legal powers to force me to follow its recommendations. I could be thrown in jail for acquiring and taking something not prescribed for me, even if no recreational component is involved.
It gets worse. There are some drugs my doctor recommends that my HMO will not dispense. Logically, my doctor should be able to write a script for such medications that I can get filled from any source in the world I trust. My job can be sent to India at the whim of my employer, but it's illegal for me to get prescriptions filled there. I'm forced to pay the US cartel monopoly price.
So does Cabernet, if abused. A certain number of people do poison themselves this way every year. Is that a reason for us all to be deprived of its benefits?
This raises an interesting point. If you come down with something in Spain, Switzerland, or most other countries, you can walk into any pharmacy and have the pharmacist whip up something that might help, using that expertise. I actually did this once in Greece, when I caught the sniffles. I was dispensed Claritin, which at the time was an expensive prescription-only drug in the US.
According to this study they already kill 700,000+ people a year:
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