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Americans may soon be able to get cholesterol-lowering medications and other widely used prescription drugs without seeing a doctor, a first step in what could amount to sweeping changes to how patients access treatments for chronic conditions.
The Food and Drug Administration in a draft guideline on Tuesday outlined how such a status, which the agency said could help lower health-care costs, would work. Patients could answer questions on a mobile-phone app to help determine whether they should be able to access a medication without a prescription.
"Our hope is that the steps we're taking to advance this new, more modern framework will contribute to lower costs for our health care system overall and provide greater efficiency and empowerment for consumers by increasing the availability of certain products that would otherwise be available only by prescription," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
Order your drugs from a smartphone app.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 19 2018, @01:58PM (4 children)
It's why I stock up on drugs I know are useful, like anti-biotics, whenever I travel to a 3rd World Country, exactly because they don't make you jump through doctor and insurance hoops. You got the cash, they got the meds.
We talk about FLOSS all the time in our community, and folks have started talking about Open Harware, Open Cars, and that sort of thing, so I'd add that it would be great to start talking about Open Medication. Yes, I'm aware of potential pitfalls, but I'm also keenly aware of what a racket Drug companies have going.
For me, it's a question of freedom. Every single time we let ourselves depend on a corporation or government to do something, they turn right around and abuse it. If we give ourselves the means to walk away then it levels the playing field.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:05PM
Fuck the pitfalls. Give me a chemputer that prints antibiotics, LSD, cocaine, heroin, or whatever. The DEA never had a high ground to lose.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 19 2018, @04:53PM (2 children)
My personal philosophy is that all drugs should be legal for individuals to purchase. This includes all prescription drugs.
The implementation would be a phased approach where we slowly introduce new drugs in reverse-order of harm. E.g. crack would probably go last.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday July 19 2018, @05:37PM (1 child)
I'm not sure I agree about this for anti-biotics, but where the only damage is done to the person taking the drugs I'm fine with it. But I think that the laws allowing the advertising of drugs are far too loose. And I include alcohol on that list. (Not, however, coffee or tea. Despite the humor those are neither excessively dangerous nor addictive, and only slightly habituating.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 19 2018, @05:45PM
I'm not sure I agree about this for anti-biotics, but where the only damage is done to the person taking the drugs I'm fine with it.
Hmm...hadn't really thought about antibiotics in that frame...
There is a compelling, direct, harm to the public there.
However, it's not taking the drugs that's the problem. It's not-taking the drugs that's the problem.
Id' rather see failing to complete the course of antibiotics be illegal than starting an unapproved course in the first place . Although....I have no idea how you'd implement something like that.