Footnotes

• Competing interests None.

• Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

• ↵Author footnote i Note an ambiguity in the concept of ‘self-medication.’ It ultimately appears Flanigan is arguing for a right to access and use prescription-grade drugs for medical or non-medical purposes—take the case of the student who wants to use Adderall not to treat a recognised medical condition but to be more competitive, or the analogy with elective cosmetic surgery. Her argument is, perhaps, really an argument for a right to access whatever resources are available for purposes of self-improvement—however one conceives of ‘improvement’ to oneself.

• ↵ii O'Neill, Onora, Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics, Cambridge, 2002.

• ↵iii Arguably, not all forms of suicide qualify as self-destruction in the relevant way.