Drug Hoarding and ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’
In the article, Drug Hoarding and ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, John Paulos relates the prisoner’s dilemma to stockpiling Cipro antibiotics in order to combat anxiety and anthrax. Instead of the conventional confess or not confess, there is the choice of stockpiling or not stockpiling. There is a greater individual benefit to stockpiling because you will have the antidote if you do come into contact with anthrax. The problem is that if everybody chooses to stockpile, then there will be a shortage for the drug. The benefit of not stockpiling is that there will be more antibiotics available for everybody in the case of an emergency. Similar to the prisoner’s dilemma situation where the optimal outcome does not necessarily represent the greatest individual benefit, the best option is for everybody to work together by not stockpiling the antibiotics.
In order to promote the option of not stockpiling antibiotics, the public health system needs to stress that there is no emergency that necessitates buying the antibiotic, Cipro. Another way to limit stockpiling is to convince the public that both penicillin and doxycycline can also be used to combat anthrax and that there are no shortages for those drugs. Finally, the government has the option of breaking the drug’s patent to rapidly increase the supply of Cipro with generic versions of the drug, which has already been done in Canada. Paulos concludes that stockpiling is an irrational way to increase your own feeling of security.
Paulos, Commentary By John Allen. “Drug Hoarding and ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma'” ABC News. ABC News Network, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2013. <http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=98179>.