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If the Abortion Pill: Why Not Most Drugs?
The Supreme Court seems likely to allow an abortion pill to be available over-the-counter, instead of requiring a prescription.
I am a committed opponent of the FDA: I hate that patients are not allowed to make our own decisions when it comes to medication (but we are encouraged to do so in all kinds of less-healthy ways, “natural” drugs and behaviors, including promiscuity). And so I wonder… is there a silver lining to be had here? Might the government allowing patients to self-prescribe certain drugs without a doctor’s prescription be extended to allow many more on the same legal basis?
In which case this could be a “win” for freedom, could it not? After all, a sensible person may well have a stock of antibiotics handy in the event of an infection. (I know I do.) But that is currently not allowed. During Covid I was credited with saving a number of lives by helping to distribute Ivermection, Hydroxy, and other drugs that I assessed (correctly) were a good idea. This could have landed me in jail.
We know that doctors know a lot. But we learned from Covid that these same doctors often defer to experts who are – to put it as delicately as I can – not focused on the core mission of enabling better health. These experts do not save lives. They take them.
Whatever your views on abortion and the abortion pill, this specific drug comes with some real health risks. If those risks can be undertaken by a patient without medical supervision, then can we not draw a line at risks of that magnitude and argue that ALL drugs that are that dangerous (or less) should be available without a prescription?
P.S. I would include addictive drugs as remaining under the thumb of a prescriber – they are clearly more dangerous than the abortion drug is to the pregnant woman.
P.P.S. I appreciate there is an insurance company angle here. The insurance companies can still refuse to cover drugs that are not prescribed by a doctor, or otherwise have unintended consequences of medication taken by a person (in a similar way to my life insurer refusing to cover me if I engage in risky behavior).
Published in General
I will be writing soon on this topic, but from a different perspective.
Almost all effective drugs come with real risks. If patients actually read the two or three pages of “full-disclosure” information that come with all of them, we’d probably never take anything. (I say this as a person recovering from near-pneumonia, and the recent recipient of prescriptions for four drugs I’d have taken even if “immediate death” were a possible outcome of any of them (Oh, wait. Anaphylactic shock. Apparently it was a possible outcome of at least one of them. The other possible outcomes aren’t so pleasant either), if only they’d have stopped the wheezing, the coughing, the breathlessness, the flashing lights in my field of vision, the headaches, and the pain. Thankfully, they did stop all those things, apparently without killing me, and I seem to be (slowly) on the mend.)
It’s unfortunate that–over the past few years–the regular FDA warnings about widely-prescribed drugs haven’t been considered important when it comes to drugs approved by those determined to impose sanctions on the little people. And so, even though we’re regularly subjected to fast-moving and detailed advertisement information about how drugs for eczema, pneumonia, Peyronie’s Disease, ED, flu, psoriasis, acne, and Lord knows what else can harm us, any information on the malign effects of the Covid vaccine seems to skate and is never mentioned. I’ll go on the record here as someone who’s in favor of transparency all round.
WRT the abortion pill, I might agree with your general principle that “relatively” safe medicines should be available without a prescription. But I do not find in favor of a woman who takes that decision, absent really extraordinary circumstances which–I do not believe–is regularly the case.
Also, I think there’s been a general trend towards allowing OTC access to medicines that were–once–only available with a prescription. My own experience, that with something once known as “Flonase” is one of them. “Allegra” (fexofenadine) is another. There are many more. This isn’t really a new thing.
The ethical argument, when abortion is part of the equation, is another thing altogether.
But a legal ruling on the threshold is what interests me. I would welcome clarity as to which drugs need a scrip, based on a quantifiable risk/benefit. Because if that happened, then a whole range of other options would open up that are currently locked down by the FDA – including not just medicines, but also stuff like toothpaste and sunscreens. And perhaps even medical devices like self-diagnosis solutions that the FDA hates.
One out of 25 patients that take the abortion pill have to get emergency treatment. That seems pretty high to me and I don’t see why you would sell it over-the-counter.
I was on Demerol for 24 hours and I thought I was the Dalai Lama. Good God that stuff is dangerous. Supposedly that’s one of the lower opioids in terms of “fun”.
There needs to be a threshold. And it should be consistently applied.
I agree that 1 out of 25 is a crazy high number. I’d guess than antibiotics cause less than 1 in 1000 to seek emergency care. Does anyone here have specific and relevant knowledge?
They more or less ***lied*** , for more or less four months that it was going to ***stop the spread***.
I took three shots, and a year later I got sick as hell from COVID-19. I would have traded ordinary flu for that experience.
Public health is worthless. What are we going to do the next time we have a contagion?
I don’t think marijuana should be legalized the way it is, but beyond that, if you want to take drugs, have at it in my opinion, except for one thing: opioids. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t hear nearly enough people talking about how ***impossibly good*** that garbage makes you feel. You think you are Dale Carnegie and you are never going to have another problem again in your life.
YMMV. I don’t like the feeling, and even the pain-killing does not work well for me. I am too much of a control freak.
I only took it once, but I 1000% cannot understand that point of view. I wish I was like that.
It was after I got eye surgery and I can see why he gave it to me because it really killed the pain and gives you great motivation. It hurts like hell when it wears off, though.
There is some risk in regard to antibiotics though, since misuse can lead to drug-resistant pathogens etc.
There is risk to anything. We are all going to die. We should be able to choose our risks.
As we see in various places, though, it’s not always just our own risks. Misuse of antibiotics leading to drug-resistant pathogens can affect others.
That is always the rub. I know people who think old people should die sooner so as not to reduce the inheritance…
I hope you don’t think those are somehow equivalent.
Response to opioids and analogues appears to vary drastically by individual. I’m fairly insensitive, by the time I get enough on board for pain control, I am dozing off. No particular emotional reaction, just ‘zzzzz’. My wife’s reaction varies drastically depending on the specific drug, some are effective but no particular other reaction, some cause a combination of hallucinations and nausea, which was loads of fun before we figured this out. Probably neither of us are at risk of addiction.
I don’t know where to begin to reply to this post.
iWe, are you really competent to choose the correct antibiotic for someone with a cough? It might be asthma or it might be GI reflux or it might be pneumonia. The “…We know that doctors know a lot…” includes making a diagnosis and understanding the effects of the drug employed upon the patient.
Don’t let the example of Dr Fauci tempt you into self-diagnosis and self-treatment. Lots of us chafed under the rules that were imposed upon us in 2020. That does not make a lay person competent to self-treat.
That’s a good point. We don’t want people gorging on antibiotics every time they get a sniffle, or worse, as a prophylactic. That would quickly lead to resistant strains of bacteria, plus many people suffering side effects.
On the other hand, every time I get bronchitis (my cold with clear phlegm turns into hacking up the green/yellow stuff) I am always prescribed the exact same ZPAC prescription. Doesn’t matter if it’s my regular doctor, or a rando at urgent care, it’s always the same. Since I already know it by heart (6 x 250mg pills of azithromycin, 2 the first day, 1 each of the following 5 days), the rigmarole of going to the doctor seems pointless.
The FDA is part of a subset of agencies up and operating inside the USA to help the WEF/WHO/UN rulers obtain a massive culling of the human race.
So yes, the FDA is allowing for this abortificant to be obtained without a prescription. As the women obtaining it will be helping to de-pop the world.
As far as letting people obtain needed prescriptions because the FDA would allow for other drugs to come about and be given over-the-counter status, why no, of course not. After all, doing that would benefit humanity far too much. And it might allow us to be healthier and happier – something that the people now standing in total control over all of us definitely do not want to have happen.
All of our decisions affect others. If we use that as an excuse to limit freedom, then the end result will be no freedom.
I have had recurring strep. I know what it feels and tastes like. And I know that having a Z-Pack handy makes a huge difference.
Ultimately, we are, each of us, responsible for our own persons. We should all try to make informed decisions.
I did my research. I reached conclusions that doctors were unwilling to reach – but which turned out to be absolutely correct. I saved lives. The doctors who failed at their jobs deserve no inherent respect for “chafing” at rules they obeyed.
I am really intrigued by the idea of a Supreme Court ruling that, for example, might say that below a “Micromort” level of X, the FDA/government cannot regulate.
Of course, micromorts are also prone to bad scholarship, garbage inputs, etc. But I still admire the concept: actually quantify risks, instead of just handwaving about “microplastics” or various scary-sounding maladies.
I could not find the micromorts associated with the abortion pill, but that would surely be a useful piece of information.
For the past 25 years, I’ve been taking the same meds. I see my doctor every 4 months, he writes a prescription, and I’m on my merry way. If I had any health issues, I would go see him. So yeah, I’d like to get my drugs without a prescription, but I think a doctor should 1) provide the prescription in the first place, and 2) sign off on a patient getting the medicine without a regular visit.
The reason why the FDA doesn’t apply this approach to all medications is that abortion pills reduce the number of people, whereas other medications tend to keep people around longer to consume more healthcare resources. So the meds that are most effective are the ones most restricted (and these are generally the more expensive drugs, like wegovy or Zepbound, drugs that actually work).
Milton Friedman was a trenchant critic of the FDA. To paraphrase his view, he seemed to think that the main effect of the FDA was to keep life saving medicines out of the hands of patients. Which happened to concord all to well with reality.
Now that life ending medications, such as Mifepristone, are available, of course the FDA will allow maximal patient access to them. It is part of the Great Reset, the effort to cull the human population of the planet, to save the planet, which started with Eugenic forced sterilization, morphed into abortion on demand, and is now made more efficient by easy access to the abortion pill. And, if the mother dies in the process of inducing her own abortion, per the attitude of our elites, so much the better. Two lives ended for the price of one. What could be more desirable for our murderous elites. They are also trying to deprive us of energy and food, medical care that is life saving and supporting, and restricting our activities so that if we do survive, we can do little to dislodge them from overseeing our existence.
I just wrote a post on the abortion pill, and I hadn’t thought about the aspect of culling the population. Of course. How could I miss that? Especially where the mother could die?
Maybe you’re just not cynical enough (not that that’s a good thing to be).