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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

As usual this is the result of gatekeeping in the medical industry. It is typical of this industry to kill a million people through inaction to avoid killing one through action.

As a bonus, by arrogating the exclusive right to drug prescription and analysis to themselves they can charge what they want.

Man deserves true freedom. To self diagnose if one so desires, to kill oneself through incorrect prescriptions if one so desires.

People foolishly say “If only the doctors would see my illness as an illness” not realizing they exist in a false prison. Doctors should not stop you from treating yourself. You are sovereign over your body. Never let them rule.

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Man deserves true freedom. To self diagnose if one so desires, to kill oneself through incorrect prescriptions if one so desires.

The thing is, none of the rules you mention exist to stop patients from doing anything. Rather, they exist to protect desperate patients from con artists selling (sometimes literally) snake oil "cures".

I'm reminded of accredited investor rules -- which also chafe at times, but are equally essential for protecting people from scams.

Indeed, but the accredited investor rules do have a relatively easy escape. The corresponding escape for medicine is really hard.

For medical devices we have "for scientific and recreational use only".

This is correct. Am MD and agree fully. GP clearly hasn't thought through all the implications of his statement.

Fortunately almost all drugs can be ordered online without prescription, at least those that are also in India. For larger amounts of money you could even order a custom synthesis in a Chinese lab.

Amusingly, I have fast access to this pipeline (one of my childhood friends owns a generics manufacturer in India). But for tests, etc. sadly I am constrained to American gatekeeping unless I physically transport myself.

That's all fine and dandy until the moment where you self-medicate, take your car, faint at the wheel and kill a family of four.

I mean, isn't that just status quo bias? You can come up with a story for how anything will result in negative consequences. If we didn't have medical gatekeeping you could just as easily come up with a story about how requiring people to get approval from a doctor to treat themselves could result in someone fainting at the wheel and killing a family of four, and it'd be just as meaningless as this.

That’s all fine and dandy until, lacking medication, you faint at the wheel and kill a family of five. Five being greater than four it is clearly worse not to allow for self-medication.

But it's incredibly more likely than if left to themselves, people will self-medicate, and not necessarily with due research beforehand.

To give an example: in my country, 56% of people have already medicated with homeopathy (a known scam for decades). Imagine if they could just buy any other medication, which unlike homeopathy, could have strong secondary effects ? Those 56% people who have "illnesses" with very benign symptoms that for most cases cures itself in a couple days without any drugs (homeopathy is used for anything, common cold, headaches, itches, you name it ...), now they're potentially taking much more dangerous meds. So it's clearly not equivalent as 56% of people definitely don't have "faint-at-the-wheel" symptoms today.

The existence of side-effects affects how many people will take the drug. I don’t think the zero side-effect situation illustrates anything any more than giving away your product for free tells you how many people will buy it.

That would be very helpful if I knew how to treat myself, or if some of the alternatives I might try were as safe as I should desire for experimentation. If anything, hare-brained attempts by loiscenced physicians at treatment with antibiotics, which left me with tinnitus, have made me very skeptical of any treatment until it's properly explained why I should agree. But I will leave that fight for when anyone can come up with a plausible option.

And that is a choice you can make for yourself. It is good that no one demands you treat yourself, only that you have the option.

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