Paternalism and Public Health
Since medical paternalism is wrong in the clinical context, it should be rejected in public policy as well. But even if paternalistic public health policies were permissible, it is not clear that prohibitive pharmaceutical regulations are necessary to promote public health. Prohibitions could undermine health in some cases, for example, if prescription requirements make patients more deferential to physicians and tolerant of medical risks. Premarket testing requirements cause people to suffer and die waiting for new drugs to get approved, and they discourage new drug development. This is not to say that regulation serves no purpose. Pharmaceutical regulators provide a valuable pubic good by overseeing testing for new drugs and by certifying drugs that they deem generally safe and effective. But the benefits of regulation do not require that the regulations be prohibitive, and prohibitive regulations not only violate patients’ rights, they may also cost lives.