Medical Freedom and the Complexity of Rights for the Individual Versus the Public’s Health

Alicia Johnson – Postdoctoral Fellow, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University

Abstract: The rise of the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement reflects an increasing public demand to participate in medical decision-making and medical freedom. While the MAHA movement is a more recent iteration, the concept of medical freedom has existed for more than a century. Medical freedom reflects a libertarian ideology that opposes government intrusion on personal health choices and freedoms. The concept of medical freedom is both the right to gain access to treatment as well as to refuse treatments, encompassing the rights of the patient and also the physician’s rights. While medical freedom is often used to express a conflict between individual rights and government control over medicine, it more recently has been evoked to justify a version of medical autonomy which focuses on individual decisions. However, this version of medical autonomy holds individual patients’ rights as most preeminent, ignoring or dismissing risks to public health and safety of others. This presentation will trace the historical development and modern usage of medical freedom in the US from the 1900s to present day. It will discuss how more recent advocates link the concept to medical autonomy and other bioethics claims. The discussion will also describe health policy debates at the state and national level that look to limit public health measures (masks, stay-at-home orders, vaccines) and permitting the use of experimental interventions (Right to Try and Unproven Stem Cell laws) that are perceived to infringe on personal liberties, without regard to safety and efficacy data nor public health concerns.

Keywords: medical autonomy, right to try, public policy