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We can accomplish many great things if we knowingly discard ethics for the sake of efficiency, yes.

by ebg13 7y ago

vikramkr 7y ago
Not really in this case though. Ethically there's not much of a concern with that study since we don't know what works so we're not doing any harm by prescribing known bad methods. The ethical harm would come from a poor study design that won't tell us anything useful. Getting good data from a study like this is really difficult, and we can't really accomplish anything by discarding good data for the sake of efficiency
londons_explore 7y ago
I question if modern ethics are perhaps too focussed of the wellbeing of the individual, at the expense of the wellbeing of all of us... Or, to put it more bluntly, a modern ethics committee would have rejected the idea of installing sewers in cities to prevent disease because one builder of the sewer might have died in the process. Without that, industrialisation probably would never have happened, and we'd all be subsistence farmers today.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  This is especially true with studies. Because it was thought unethical to conduct studies around masks and infectious disease, the evidence was sparse, so the WHO and CDC didn't recommend wearing them. This has directly led to tens of thousands of deaths.
- ebg13 7y ago
  > Or, to put it more bluntly, a modern ethics committee would have rejected the idea of installing sewers You get to choose whether to be in the business of installing sewers. Saying that it's ok to force people into medical experiments against their will for the greater good is how you get Nazi holocaust atrocities. Medical ethics has a long history that it sounds like you might enjoy spending some time reading about.
  - buckminster 7y ago
    We're all being forced into a medical experiment against our will. Might as well be a useful one.
    - ebg13 7y ago
      > We're all being forced into a medical experiment against our will. I'm disappointed by your false equivalence between being told to stay home and safe and being made into a guinea pig. If being home and safe means you lose necessary income, then your ire should be directed at your governments at all levels for refusing to prepare critical safety nets and regulatory environments that would make it possible for you to stay alive and safe without laboring every day. But advocating a regression on everything that history has taught us about medical ethics is terrible and bad. We're talking about thousands of years of accumulated and refined history lessons here. Medical ethics is a perfect example of why learning history is important.
      - HarryHirsch 7y ago
        Yes, the natural experiment is being right now. You have the Western European countries with a social safety net that allows people to stay home for a few months to ride out the plague and the US, where such a thing does not exist. This has economic repercussions. A good amount of meat processing plants are now idled because the workforce is off sick due to lack of protective equipment and sick leave. We are looking at meat shortages. I hope people make the right connections.
      - buckminster 7y ago
        Might-have-beens have no relevance to the ethics of the choices we make now. We are in the middle of a vast medico-economic experiment. It is bizarre to consider the ethics of only the medical side of the experiment, not the experiment as a whole.
        rglullis 7y ago
        What "medico-economic" experiment?! This is much an experiment as "living in a war-torn country" or "being hit by a major natural disaster" is an experiment. If people start to starve because we stopped being able to produce food or people start dying of other causes because our basic infrastructure start collapsing, then you can start talking about ethical dilemmas.
- jameslevy 7y ago
  Very relevant to another article on HN today, "Why we can't build": "The institutions through which Americans build have become biased against action rather than toward it. They’ve become, in political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s term, “vetocracies,” in which too many actors have veto rights over what gets built. That’s true in the federal government. It’s true in state and local governments. It’s even true in the private sector."

We can accomplish many great things if we knowingly discard ethics for the sake of efficiency, yes.

by ebg13 7y ago

We can accomplish many great things if we knowingly discard ethics for the sake of efficiency, yes.

Not really in this case though. Ethically there's not much of a concern with that study since we don't know what works so we're not doing any harm by prescribing known bad methods. The ethical harm would come from a poor study design that won't tell us anything useful. Getting good data from a study like this is really difficult, and we can't really accomplish anything by discarding good data for the sake of efficiency

londons_explore 7y ago

I question if modern ethics are perhaps too focussed of the wellbeing of the individual, at the expense of the wellbeing of all of us... Or, to put it more bluntly, a modern ethics committee would have rejected the idea of installing sewers in cities to prevent disease because one builder of the sewer might have died in the process. Without that, industrialisation probably would never have happened, and we'd all be subsistence farmers today.

JamesBarney 7y ago
This is especially true with studies. Because it was thought unethical to conduct studies around masks and infectious disease, the evidence was sparse, so the WHO and CDC didn't recommend wearing them. This has directly led to tens of thousands of deaths.
ebg13 7y ago
> Or, to put it more bluntly, a modern ethics committee would have rejected the idea of installing sewers You get to choose whether to be in the business of installing sewers. Saying that it's ok to force people into medical experiments against their will for the greater good is how you get Nazi holocaust atrocities. Medical ethics has a long history that it sounds like you might enjoy spending some time reading about.
- buckminster 7y ago
  We're all being forced into a medical experiment against our will. Might as well be a useful one.
  - ebg13 7y ago
    > We're all being forced into a medical experiment against our will. I'm disappointed by your false equivalence between being told to stay home and safe and being made into a guinea pig. If being home and safe means you lose necessary income, then your ire should be directed at your governments at all levels for refusing to prepare critical safety nets and regulatory environments that would make it possible for you to stay alive and safe without laboring every day. But advocating a regression on everything that history has taught us about medical ethics is terrible and bad. We're talking about thousands of years of accumulated and refined history lessons here. Medical ethics is a perfect example of why learning history is important.
    - HarryHirsch 7y ago
      Yes, the natural experiment is being right now. You have the Western European countries with a social safety net that allows people to stay home for a few months to ride out the plague and the US, where such a thing does not exist. This has economic repercussions. A good amount of meat processing plants are now idled because the workforce is off sick due to lack of protective equipment and sick leave. We are looking at meat shortages. I hope people make the right connections.
    - buckminster 7y ago
      Might-have-beens have no relevance to the ethics of the choices we make now. We are in the middle of a vast medico-economic experiment. It is bizarre to consider the ethics of only the medical side of the experiment, not the experiment as a whole.
      - rglullis 7y ago
        What "medico-economic" experiment?! This is much an experiment as "living in a war-torn country" or "being hit by a major natural disaster" is an experiment. If people start to starve because we stopped being able to produce food or people start dying of other causes because our basic infrastructure start collapsing, then you can start talking about ethical dilemmas.
jameslevy 7y ago
Very relevant to another article on HN today, "Why we can't build": "The institutions through which Americans build have become biased against action rather than toward it. They’ve become, in political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s term, “vetocracies,” in which too many actors have veto rights over what gets built. That’s true in the federal government. It’s true in state and local governments. It’s even true in the private sector."