Drugs (the boring kind)

2004-09-15 - 9:39 a.m.

Keep it coming, CBC!

Today's interview is about a group of pharmacists who've decided not to fill prescriptions for some drugs, which they consider to be bad for patients, as a protest against unethical practices of some pharmaceutical companies.

I heard the lead up, and a part of me was like "Yeah! You go, cool counter-culture pharmacists!"

But listening to the experts talk, as well as some call ins, and I think I may be changing my mind. At the very least, this is a more complicated issue.

The complications from the point where we should allow professionals who serve the public in life-and-death situations to use their own personal beliefs to guide how they do their jobs. A teacher called in and explained that while she is very religious in her personal life, she understands that in the classroom, she needs to toe the secular line and she sees the role of the pharmacist in the same way: whatever their personal feelings toward drug companies, doctors, "The System", etc, they are there to do their job, and if filling prescriptions poses moral problems to them, maybe they should look for another line of work. An expert posed the possibility that some people might use their personal feelings as a basis for descrimination against race, homosexuality, etc. Or, less sinister, what if a pharmacist just chooses to stop dealing a drug because it contains an ingredient that's prohibited by their religion? Or because they read a paper in a less-reputable journal?

I think that we're in the early stages of a shift in how our culture handles medicine. Until now, the different roles of medical care (doctors and nurses, pharmacists, drug companies, etc) all seemed to provide extra layers of security. Before you got your drug from the drug store, you and the pills have gone through several tests and examinations by a variety of professionals from different schools of learning, all of them (theoretically) working with the ultimate goal of making you healthy. This would help to prevent complications that might arise from an oversight.

But now, due to a bunch of factors, these professionals aren't all working for the same goal. Some are working for profit, others are just hoping to get through their day without having problem patients, some feel that one type of drug is the best route while others disagree.

As our population grows older, I think that the conflicts we're starting to see will get more intense. We need some way to look at these sort of conflicts and to reliably make sure that the patient remains a priority, but also to understand that not all problems have one "right" answer.

I like the idea that my pharmacist might be willing to risk his position or career to keep me safe, or keep me from being preyed on by a selfish corporation, but I also don't want to be in a situation where a misguided pharmacist is my only source of a needed medication.

My random prediction for the next twenty years is that things are going to get worse before they get better. I'm thinking of opening a psychic business.

Cheers,

The Magus

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