Lacking Up Life-Saving Drugs.

• Author: Haynes, Joe
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

Thanks to Kerry Howley for saying what I have wanted to say for years ("Locking Up Life-Saving Drugs," August/September).

Being a libertarian and a pharmacist, I have had time to contemplate the issue of why most drugs require physician intervention to begin with. The only valid reasons are patents and protectionism for physicians and drug companies. That, and drug companies and doctors consider laypeople too ignorant to manage their own care.

With the advent of the Internet, drug information is readily available to anyone willing to take the time to find it. I would suggest leaving the definitive diagnosis to doctors, but treatment options must be left to the patient. To say that we as pharmacists and physicians somehow have a mystical monopoly on drug information is fallacious. Go to any Barnes and Noble, and you'll see plenty of pocket-sized books on drugs.

Let's also add professional licensure to the mix of why medical care is so expensive. Look at the disciplinary actions of any licensing board for any given month, and you will conclude that the piece of paper is worthless. But people are so conditioned to think that a piece of paper...