On March 27, Professor Jessica Flanigan gave a guest lecture to Professor Jonathan Anomaly’s PPE class on her forthcoming book, Pharmaceutical Freedom. Professor Flanigan begins with an overview of the doctrine of informed consent, and gives several different justifications for why competent adults should be trusted with the right to make their own medical choices. Flanigan then argues that if the doctrine of informed consent allows us to refuse treatments that our doctor thinks is advisable, it should also permit us to access risky treatments, even if our doctor thinks it is inadvisable. On Flanigan’s view, different patients have diverse interests and attitudes toward risk, so governments should allow patients to access treatments without a prescription from doctors or permission from government authorities like the US Food and Drug Administration. She notes that antibiotics might be an exception, since their overuse by patients can harm other people by spurring the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Finally, for those who aren’t willing to eliminate all barriers to accessing risky treatments, Flanigan considers several different ways we might lower these barriers enough to save lives and increase liberty.
