Annotated Bibliograhpy Simon Birch

- Flanigan, J. (2017) Pharmaceutical Freedom: Why Patients Have a Right to Self

Medicate (New York, 2017; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 Aug. 2017),
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190684549.001.0001.

Flanigan’s Pharmaceutical Freedom: Why Patients Have a Right to Self-

Medicate is an extensive book evaluating the role medical paternalism has in

deciding what rights we have in deciding our own health, specifically that is

limits and prevents self-determination. Going into great detail as to the ways

in which the currently employed form of paternalism fails or is counter to the

objectives it seeks to achieve, Flanigan’s work provides an ample framework

to gain an understanding of both the recent history of paternalism but how it

effects our health system, as well as proposing alternatives forms of health

reform and policies opposed o the institutions which employ paternalism.

- Khantzian, E. J. (1996) “The Self-Medication Hypothesis of Substance Use Disorders: A

Reconsideration and Recent Applications.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 4(5): 231-244.

Khantzian’s work on self-medication hypothesis is an essential piece of literature in

regards to self-medication, and through this is relevant to the discussion of how

individuals struggle to gain access to effective and affordable forms of medication, and

the motivations they have to self-medicating. Unlike other works which focus on specific

case studies, Khantzians describes in a more theoretical approach the ways in which

self-medication is contributed and employed by those performing it.

- Scheper-Hughes, N., & Lock, M. M.(1987) “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to
Future Work in Medical Anthropology.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1(1): 6–41.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/648769

Scheper-Hughes and Lock’s work is profound in its direct and summariative

ability of not only describing differing perspectives of how health is derived from

multiple directions (the physical, social, and psychological determinants of

health), but too how health is largely constructed and perceived on an individual

basis. By going into account on how psychological conditions may well could

result in malforms of physical health, yet can do so without medical or

institutionalized recognition of doing so, Scheper-Hughes and Lock’s provide a

theoretical approach to how paternalism fails through lack of acknowledgement

and inclusion of the patient it seeks to protect.