Defending Our Right to Test: How the FDA Restricts Direct‐to‐Consumer At‐Home Testing
In November 2020, the FDA proudly announced the first at‐home COVID-19 test, but there was a catch: patients must get a prescription from a licensed health care practitioner (who is instructed to prescribe it only to symptomatic patients) to use it. Not only does this defeat the purpose of an at‐home test, it runs counter to restraining contagion. The FDA has a long history of obstructing individuals from obtaining their own health information. Do these regulations exceed the FDA’s authority? Should it be more restricted to safety and accuracy of these tests? Most importantly, is the FDA violating Americans’ rights to obtain their personal health information? Join us on January 28th with two medical ethics and legal experts who will answer these and other questions.
Race and Medical Licensing Laws
The American Medical Association originally denied membership to African American physicians and, until the 1960s, allowed state chapters to exclude Black physicians. States also require at least one year of postgraduate training, but Black graduates were often excluded at most institutions, which impeded the delivery of health care, especially to patients in the Deep South. In 2008 the AMA issued a formal apology to the nation’s African American physicians for its decades of racial discrimination. Through her scholarship, Harriet A. Washington, a writing fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, was largely responsible for making that happen. On November 10th, Washington, along with Marshala R. Lee and Jeffrey A. Miron, discussed how licensing can become a tool to affect racist ends.
Drug Reformation: End Government’s Power to Require Prescriptions
U.S. law grants the Food and Drug Administration the power to make consumers get a prescription before purchasing certain drugs. The rationale behind government‐imposed prescription requirements is consumer safety—that is, the idea that some drugs are too dangerous for consumers to use without physician supervision. In a new study, Cato scholars Jeffrey A. Singer and Michael F. Cannon argue that government‐imposed prescription requirements violate the rights of individuals to access the medicines they want, and actually make patients less safe, not more.
Experts
