Prescription for Trouble.

AuthorPostrel, Virginia
PositionOnline pharmacies and regulation

Online pharmacies challenge traditional medical models, and the regulatory backlash threatens broader Internet freedoms.

Ah, the Internet! A new world of pure thought, free of the limits and coercion of the physical world. "Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live," wrote John Perry Barlow four years ago in "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace."

Barlow had no monopoly on Internet euphoria--the idea that cyberspace is too intangible, too slippery, too ubiquitous to be controlled by government. Even today, sober analysts make much the same argument in less hyperbolic language, and technologists talk about "building the future" to bypass political barriers.

But human beings do not exist apart from their bodies. We are matter-bound creatures. And given a tool as powerful as the Internet, we soon turn it to the service of our physical selves.

Hence the latest clash between Internet dynamism and government controls: the regulatory attack on online pharmacies that don't honor traditional gatekeeping procedures.

Over the past year, attorneys general and medical regulators in several states have gone after online pharmacies that allow customers to obtain prescriptions by filling out a questionnaire rather than seeing a doctor in person. They've obtained injunctions and levied fines, driving such online pharmacies out of their states or even out of business.

In one case, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation temporarily revoked the license of a physician, Robert Filice, who reviewed questionnaires and issued prescriptions for Viagra without seeing patients. In response to the state's action, Filice issued a statement saying that he was guilty only of "being a pioneer in a new and unexplored area" and that regulators had taken his license "with the hope and intention of crushing innovation and seeing to it that as a result of his experience no other qualified, competent and caring physician will dare enter the area of online medicine." (Filice was eventually fined $1,000 and given two years' probation for "unprofessional conduct.")

Now President Clinton is calling for new federal laws to require pharmacy Web sites to get licenses from the Food and Drug Administration before they can go online--a chilling precedent. He's also proposing large new federal fines, up to $500,000 per sale, for selling prescription drugs "without a valid prescription." To enforce these new rules, the...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT