Letters to the Editor
-
there's no evidence that illegals are huring the country economically, in fact as a whole the society is probably richer becaue of them
what their presence does do is to make it much easier politically for the people with most of the money to avoid doing their fair share in the form of paying decent wages, providing the tax revenues for decent schools, health care etc.
-
Thanks CT
"if a judge has a conflict of interest in a case that s/he is asked to preside over, s/he must recuse him or herself so that the case can be heard by another judge—but s/he may not dismiss the case outright."
This is my point exactly!
A Pharmacist's duty if they have a conflict with filling a prescription is to direct the patient to another pharmacist. That is the right I am defending here!
Perhaps in someone’s perfect world people should shut up and do as they are told. I think the right of dissent is important.
And I have yet to hear someone argue in favor of limit the right to dissent in this country with regard to any other issue.
We should not be judged as a free society by our ability to defend those we agree with, but by the ferocity we defend the rights of those we do not agree with.
Now just to be clear I do not support a persons right to in anyway hinder another persons right to find a provider to provide these services , but to make a personal choice not to be in a certain business is a persons right.
Likewise, this issue only exists in a situation where the pharmacist is the owner of the pharmacy. A pharmacist who is employed by another company risks loss of employment if they make this choice, the only person who can make a decision independently to not fill a prescription is one who owns the pharmacy.
-
Jane Minty - I fully support the right of Pharmacists
I do support the right of a pharmacist to not stock viagra, levitra, propecia, etc.
Not because I agree that sexual drugs, or drugs to regrow what god has taken away are morally wrong, but because I defend a persons right to make that choice for themselves.
Maybe you think this world should be fair. It would be nice, but instead we have to deal with other people who may not share our enlightened world view.
If we agree that it is a good thing to live in a free society where a woman has the right to obtain an abortive remedy, then you have to agree to accept the freedom of everybody to within the law to exercise their own rights.
This is not some game of one upmanship. This is the very basis of our American system. The right to be free. The right to not be forced to work in a field that you do not wish to.
If you can't see that your own freedom relies on everyone else’s equal right to be free, then you really don't understand what freedom means.
-
MOVE ALONG LADIES - NO EMERGENGY CONTRACEPTION HERE
Sorry I should have commented on this too.
Yes I am sure many of these pharmacists are looking for publicity, that's kind of the point of making a political statement.
Likewise I will agree that at least one case I heard of the pharmacist went beyond simple protest and refused to return the prescription slip to his customer.
That being said, I still have to err on the side of personal freedom. Within the law.
A pharmacist who makes this choice should display such a sign to warn away customers once they have made this decision. But that being said, the right of the pharmacist should be protected as much as a woman's right to choose should be likewise be defended.
-
Pharmacists' ethics 101 continued
A Pharmacist's duty if they have a conflict with filling a prescription is to direct the patient to another pharmacist. That is the right I am defending here!
Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough.
Given that a particular pharmacy actually stocks a given substance—in other words, given that the pharmacy as a whole has chosen to sell it—and given that the prescription is medically appropriate, a pharmacist is ethically obliged to see that the prescription is filled.
If the pharmacist's conscience forbids him or her to dispense certain products, s/he—like our hypothetical judge—should remove him or herself from the situation while ensuring that the patient's needs are met without unreasonable delay.
To do otherwise—even by sending the patient to a different pharmacy—is, as I mentioned, to unethically interfere with the patient-physician relationship—not to mention to do a disservice to his or her employer. Pharmacists are not actors in the medical decision-making process.
-
Nazi Schmazi
I'm sick of everything everyone doesn't like being equated with Nazis. They are not Nazis. No one in the US is going to burn tattoos in anyone's arm and gas to death 9 million men, women and children. As distasteful, bigotted, arrogant and apocalyptic the religious right is, they are not Nazis. The day some evangelical pastor grabs a child by the heels and smashes his brains out on a shithouse wall, call me. Then I'll call them Nazis. You don't know from Nazis but trust me, when I see one, I'll grab a rifle myself and start shooting them.
-
The right of patient-doctor care outweighs the pharmacist's right to not fill
The doctor-patient relationship is protected by law. In our rights-balancing system, it supercedes the pharmacist's right to interfere. The pharmacist has a duty to make sure the patient can get a prescription filled by someon else in a timely manner if he or she won't do it. Pharmacists do not prescribe, and don't know whether the prescription is for contraceptive use, dysmenorrhea (pain at periods), to shrink fibroids (a legitimate medical use), to hep deal with blood pressure (emergency contraception, etc. It's not their place to second guess why a doctor chose to prescribe a drug, based on their assumption of use. That is dangerous.
A few states have passed conscience clauses, but it is uncertain they will pass constitutional muster. The pharmacist is presuming more power in the medical relationship a doctor. The nurse-patient and doctor-patient relationship is very different. The pharmacist's right has to be balanced against a patient's and doctor's right. Would we allow a pharmacist who help religious revulsion to heart medicine or diabetes' medicine refuse to fill? One who converted to Scientology refuse to fill anti-psychotics? It's the same issue.
Dahlia Lithwick at Slate wrote a really clear article on this issue a while ago. She made it very clear that pharmacists should not enjoy the same protections as doctors in terms of this issue, and her explanation echoes that of other constitutional law experts.
pharmacists are not physicians. Comments like those of Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, who recently told Canada's National Post that "stopping human life is not a legitimate part of medical practice … medicine is for healing," are grandiose and dangerous. A woman's decision to use birth control or emergency contraception is between her and her physician, period. Hard questions about the circumstances of her pregnancy, her marital status, and her alternatives can be asked there—if they need be asked at all. But for a pharmacist to subordinate a physician's judgment to his own is the height of arrogance. Reports from around the country—of pharmacists delivering hectoring lectures, discriminating against unmarried women, or refusing to return prescription forms to be filled elsewhere—reveal what happens when pharmacists are allowed to interpose their own values between a physician's medical judgment and the needs of her patient.
http://www.slate.com/id/2116688/