No, dispensing the pharmaceuticals is the job. Moral reservations are a complication to doing the job.
You may as well argue that being too short to reach the pharmaceuticals on the top shelf is part of doing the job.
Your argument is convoluted and asinine.
Oh things like the basic description of the job.
A pharmacists job is to dispense medications and possibly to verify that dosing is within acceptable ranges, verify that there are no drug-drug interactions, make sure the patient understands how to take the medication and what side effects might occur … stuff like that. Refusing to do any of those things is refusing to do the job. There is no way to parse refusal to dispense as doing that job.
A primary care physician’s job is to take care of a patient’s health including both illnesses and prioritizing preventative guidance according to their best understanding of the relevant risk factors and taking into account guidance from their expert bodies. Hence a pediatrician’s job description includes well care visits in which such anticipatory guidance is given, different items covered by different docs with gun safety definitely on the list as a relevant safety item as per the professional organizations, along with many other items which get prioritized according to health professional’s understanding of what most applies to his/her population base and his/her judgements.
You can disagree with the professional organization’s guidance or with the judgement of what is most important and believe that discussing one or another health or safety risk factor does or does not present enough of a risk to bother discussing. But clearly making that choice and discussing those risks is part of that job description.
If his/her judgement was that any of those repesent a reasonable risk to your health and safety and that you were part of a demographic in which preventative guidance was of some reasonable chance to impart meaningful risk reduction, then yes, definitely. And with some of my teen patients I worry about some of those very things, and distracted driving too, and discuss them with the family.
Again, you are entitled to believe that the doctor’s and the professional organization’s judgements about what represents reasonable risk and reasonable opportunity for risk reduction is wrong, just like you can disagree with nutritional advice, or about sunscreen. Sometimes doctors’ judgements about risk are wrong. Doctors often are not sunbathers so how are they expert on sitting in the sun? And we can have a debate about whether or not the advice to use sunscreen is causing more harm than good by way of causing vitamin D deficiency. But a state deciding that sunscreen is a forbidden topic for doctors to cover? Fukkin crazy.
What, all of them? :dubious: I’m sure you can think of some pretty strong exceptions yourself.
Like that one?
Let me guess who gets to define “irrational.” You?
Very easy to think you’re winning a debate when you arrogate to yourself the right to define all the terms.
Just more proof that when gun nuts talk about freedom and rights, they really don’t mean it. They’re just a bunch of cowards who feel dickless without their toys. Not that this was the first time I’ve suspected that, but this is the most prominent and extreme case. Future discussions with gun nuts should be fun as I’ll no longer pretend they give a shit about rights
Sadly, you’re correct. Anyone who supported this legislation cannot credibly claim to be overly concerned about individual rights – they are simply concerned about the rights they like.
But I should point out that I didn’t favor this legislation.
Now remind me, please, how you felt about pharmacist conscience clauses.
And remind me please about how you feel about what is and is not included in basic job descriptions.
Is it your position that refusing to dispense medication because your personal religious belief disagrees with the medication is part of the job description for a pharmacist?
Do you disagree that giving preventative guidance about health risks and deciding which guidance is worth giving is part of the job of a primary care physician, in particular a pediatrician?
Pharmacists may want to say they should not have to do their job if it violates their personal beliefs and no matter if doing such effectively makes the patient unable to get that care, and we can debate that. But to compare that with primary care physicians saying that that they want to do their job, even if the NRA or a majority in a state Congress disagrees with how they do it, is a contortion of entertaining dimensions.
Indulging in bigotry and cruelty is neither moral nor is it part of their job. Should they be allowed to refuse service to black people, or give black people poison instead of medicine? Should they be allowed to grab the woman and rape & beat her as long as they claim morality as a motive?
Because yes, that is the moral equivalent of their actions. And no, opposition to abortion has nothing to do with morality; if he had “moral reservation” about much of anything then he wouldn’t be anti-abortion at all. He’s just a bigot and a sadist. The anti-abortion movement is no better than the KKK.
No, it isn’t. It’s just an example of the old saying that if the majority was insane they’d declare sanity insane and insanity sane.
I’m open to a rational argument that demonstrates that there is a God and that Jesus was Him, and that in particular Catholicism is the religion that speaks for Him. I’d guess you believe it because your parents brainwashed you before you were old enough to know better.
What is the definition of rational where you can effectively argue that Jesus, who was God, died for a couple days, so that God, who is omnipotent, didn’t have to torture us forever, for breaking rules that He made.
You get this right, and you’ll convert the world’s atheists in droves.
These two issues are not at all comparable.
The pharmacist issue is a slam dunk. Pharmacists are required to dispense medicines that doctors prescribe. If they refuse to do that, they should get a different job. A quaker with a religious objection to handling firearms should not get a job as a firearms instructor.
Doctors and guns seems entirely unrelated. Doctors aren’t complaining that they refuse to do a thing that the law compels them to. Rather, to the extent that there’s even an issue at all, I guess they want to exceed their mandate, and do so in a way that offends some number of people, but which is at least arguably directly related to their primary purpose, and a law was passed preventing them from exceeding their mandate in that fashion.
That brings up a variety of interesting issues, but none of them are at all the same as pharmacists refusing to dispense legal prescriptions.
By whom?
State law? No, many states explicitly permit pharmacists to refuse based on conscience.
Professional standards? No, the APhA explicitly supports the rights of pharmacists to refuse based on conscience.
So by what authority do you declare that pharmacists are required to dispense medicines that doctors prescribe and imply that no exception for conscience refusals is permitted?
It’s difficult to rebut this theory, because, as the old joke illustrates, “I used to think that my brain was the most important part of my body…but then I realized who was telling me that.” In other words, how can I independently assess the effect of the supposed brainwashing?
I can provide some evidence against it. Although brought up Catholic, as you intuit, in college, I identified as agnostic, and felt atheistic; I said ‘agnostic’ only as a nod to acknowledge I couldn’t prove the lack of a deity. But my basic position was that I had no reason to accept the existence of any god or gods.
But then, I found a reason. I had an experience, a personal experience, which left me quite convinced that there was a God, and a Jesus, and a Mary who was His mother.
So now I had a reason, a strong one. But at the same time, I absolutely acknowledged the validity of my prior position: I took it because I had no evidence to support an extraordinary claim. Now that I had evidence, I could no longer hold to a position of agnosticism – but for anyone else not having shared my experience, agnosticism was a perfectly rational position to take.
And that’s where I stand today. I don’t claim that belief in God is an obvious truth – to the contrary, it makes very little rational sense to believe in God – unless you have had an experience which changes that position.
The best thing I can do is argue by analogy. If individual cells in our bodies possessed some kind of low-level sentience, we can imagine that they might speak of their universe – the body – being controlled by some super-sentient being. And some of those cells might rail at the unfairness of their treatment at the behest of the body. Muscle cells might rage at how the body’s exercise caused them to suffer. But they wouldn’t have the perspective to understand that the entire body’s health improved, and that their unfair treatment was for the betterment of a bigger scheme that they not only didn’t know, but lacked the capacity to even understand.
It is the same with us, and God. You rail against the unfair treatment we get, because you cannot possibly understand the larger issues in play.
But of course that explanation is much less likely, from an Occam’s Razor perspective, than the simpler one that there is no plan, no scheme, no higher intelligence affecting us. And with your set of experiences, it makes perfect sense for you to say, “Look, that’s a fun theory, but it’s extraordinary, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. You have speculated, but not provided evidence. Therefore I reject your speculation.”
But what you fail to understand, or believe, is that I have had an experience which provided that evidence to me. Unfortunately, it was not an experience I can share with you in any meaningful way, so I don’t in the least feel you are irrational for rejecting it.
But you should at least understand that, based on my experience, my own view is perfectly rational.
Not going to “remind me” eh Bricker?
Again, please explain how refusing to dispense a medicine is part of the job description of a pharmacist? Please note: the APhA wanting have its members be allowed to refuse to do their job, to deny care to a particular patient, if it conflicts with their personal religious beliefs is not an argument that doing so is part of their job.
Or are you arguing that dispensing medicines is not part of their job?
Or are you arguing that preventative guidance and deciding what is important as part of preventative guidance is not contained within the job description of a primary care doctor such as a pediatrician?
Because unless you are making one or more of those arguments your contention of any parallel between the pharmacist situation and this one is very very silly. The circumstance of wanting to be allowed to refuse to do your job even if that means that the patient then cannot get their treatment completed is not the same as doctors wanting to do their job and being told that doing so may result in state required discipline.
Max my mandate includes preventative care. In my estimation for my patient population gun storage is not on my usual rotation but that will vary by patient population and by individual assessment and knowledge base.
I was not aware of that. I think those are both terrible rules. What happens to a patient in a small town who can only easily get to one pharmacy, and the pharmacists there refuse to fill his or prescription? If we’re going to have to this complicated setup of doctors and pharmacists where things can only be purchased with a doctor’s prescription, and the prescription can only be filled at certain licensed locations, then individual doctors and pharmacists should be required to act with the patient’s health, as defined by various guidelines, paramount above the pharmacists individual opinions. (And before you bother responding and asking why it matters that I personally think they’re terrible rules, etc., I’m not saying it does, I’m not saying that my opinion should carry particular weight, etc.)
However, you (in typical fashion) completely ignored the main thrust of my point, which was my claim that the two situations are not remotely comparable.
They’re comparable if, as in the “Glocks vs Docs” matter that inspired the FL law, the MD refuses to treat you unless you answer the question of whether you have a gun in the house. It’s true, in a free market, both the birth control seeker and the patient would just find a new practicioner who would agree to treat them. But the current health care market in this country is really far from a free market.
Refusing to dispense a medicine is part of the job description of a pharmacist when that pharmacist believes the dispensing will harm a human life.
You “proved” the two situations are not compatible by defining one as a slam dunk, and I showed you that it wasn’t a slam dunk.
So please restate the main thrust in a way that doesn’t rest on you defining what the duties of a pharmacist are, because I don’t concede your authority to define the duties of a pharmacist.
You do realize that as soon as you bring up the Phallic Phallacy that your argument has lost all weight? Aside from whether or not your overarching point is correct, again I have to ask why anti-gun posters claim to hold a moral high ground on this issue, but resort to cheap “penis envy” jibes which are especially insulting to any woman who wishes to lawfully own a firearm?
I’m sorry, but I think that it’s shameful.
Guns are not now, never have been, and never will be a medical issue. The presence of a gun in a home does not make it more or less likely that someone will catch some illness or disease. Guns do not become a matter of “preventive care” whenever you get a bug up your butt about them. Your First Amendment rights are not being violated. You can still speak against guns, march, protest, publish, support political candidates, etc. What you can’t do is take advantage of your perceived authority to preach your political agenda to a captive audience.
I’m pleased with the recent decision, and hope it stands on appeal.