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. 2022 Sep;34(3):233-255.
doi: 10.1007/s10730-020-09415-7.

How to Regulate the Right to Self-Medicate

Joseph T F Roberts  1
Affiliations

How to Regulate the Right to Self-Medicate

Joseph T F Roberts. HEC Forum. 2022 Sep.

Abstract

In Pharmaceutical Freedom Professor Flanigan argues we ought to grant people self-medication rights for the same reasons we respect people's right to give (or refuse to give) informed consent to treatment. Despite being the most comprehensive argument in favour of self-medication written to date, Flanigan's Pharmaceutical Freedom leaves a number of questions unanswered, making it unclear how the safe-guards Flanigan incorporates to protect people from harming themselves would work in practice. In this paper, I extend Professor Flanigan's account by discussing a hypothetical case to illustrate how these safe-guards could work together to protect people from harms caused by their own ignorance or incompetence.

Keywords: Competence; Harm reduction; Pharmaceutical; Regulation; Self-medication.

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