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Testosterone/Estrogen (for hormone replacement, not trans issues). Any scheduled or formerly scheduled substances. Any medication with significant CYP interactions or other related interactions. Any drug that requires lab work and/or monitoring. Any medication that can impact renal or hepatic function if used chronically or to excess acutely. Any drug that makes someone feel good in a non-addictive way but causes significant side effects like steroids.
And that's just taking 30 seconds. Do you know which drugs you'd want to prescribe yourself show up in which categories? Do you have any idea the number of ways you could kill yourself or cause yourself permanent harm?
No.
We had a guy on here a few weeks ago who describing Tylenol usage that could have easily gotten him killed in a slow and agonizingly painful way, and this forum is mostly stuffed with high intellect and education people. And Tylenol is over the counter...
You have no idea what you don't know.
I have seen plenty of patient mortality and morbidity associated with misuse of prescribed medications, bullying NPs into giving them non-indicated medication, or outright ordering meds from another country. And that's right now with the safeguards we have in place.
Ok, great. Let's start here. What I'm missing in your comment is an argument concerning anything having to do with it. You just named the substance. What's the argument?
Do patients ask for these? What's the ratio of people who actually need them versus just think they need them? Are their side effects? Are they bad? Are the risks something that someone can easily understand and make informed decisions based off of? Are patients willing to try safer and more effective interventions first?
What's the evidence base and recommendations, how sure are we about them? Are their bad actors involved who are incentivizing certain behaviors? What is the level of excess supplementation that production can carry?
How many of these questions can you answer?
If you can't answer the analog of those questions for an item of auto repair, does that mean we have reason to ban people from doing it?
My read is that all of those things are directly in the vein of "they can hurt themselves" and "there is still possible value in expertise", not externalities. It's telling that you started with the one example of a clear externality, and as soon as we took that off the table, you completely abandoned the externality argument. Or should I pull a you and say, "If you want to continue this conversation please explain what testosterone stewardship and why it's important, or argue why it isn't." Because if that's not a thing, you're jumping to an entirely different class of argument and not even bothering to acknowledge it.
The point is Chesterton's Fence.
You know nothing about medicine or the risks and benefits of what you are proposing. Medicine is not auto repair.
That's kind of important.
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