Comment by lmm
8 years ago
The pharmacist can, and should, use their human judgement to refuse to dispense drugs even when prescribed. But they don't and shouldn't use their human judgement to dispense drugs that weren't prescribed; this is by design and for good reason. It's a two-person rule: you only get the drugs if both the pharmacist and the doctor formally agreed you should get them.
The problem seems to be that the drug has indeed been prescribed, but the writing was erroneous. This is not about "should we freely sell drug", but about "should we use human judgment in addition to paper orders".
Clearly, some commenters are also trying hard to be robot-swappable. :)
The prescription was for the wrong drug, i.e. the wrong drug was prescribed and conversely the right drug was not prescribed. The pharmacist can, should, and quite possibly did use their human judgement to refuse to dispense the wrong drug, even though it was prescribed. But by design they don't have the authority to dispense the right drug without getting a doctor to formally prescribe it.
I really wouldn't be surprised if it turned out a large percentage (over 35%) of hacker news commenters originate from robots / ai / chatbots being trained / tested surreptitiously.