Law Commons^™

The Case For Medical Licensure, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Locke et al. argue elsewhere in this issue that medical licensure should be abolished. Their reasoning is direct and seductive - but their free market cure is worse than the disease they describe. Their major premise, for example, is simply wrong: "Any governmental action that violates individual rights is improper." For this notion they cite the ultraconservative novelist Ayn Rand who talks about things that are "right" for humans to do. But there are two confusions: (I) rights do not exist in a vacuum; in an interdependent society the rights of individuals must sometimes be balanced against the rights of …