According to Jessica Flanigan,1 ‘physicians and pharmacists must be legally required to allow universal access to whatever treatments they provide. Citizens have rights of self-medication for the same reasons that they have rights of informed consent.’ In particular, health outcome promotion, welfare promotion and respect for patient autonomy, ‘the most widely cited’ reasons for the doctrine of informed consent (DIC), equally support a libertarian drug access policy. Moreover, they support it regardless of the impact on the patient’s future welfare or autonomy or the externalities for others. Outside catastrophic ‘superbug’ scenarios, we should all be able to procure any available drug without prescription, in a ‘behind the counter’ arrangement—after drug contents and risks, fully stated on labels, are assessed for our particular case and explained by pharmacists.
Flanigan’s trenchant presentation forces us to question standard justifications of DIC, but remains unconvincing. The spirit of DIC allows some coercive interventions….