3 ms·

About 4 months too late. Could have saved lives if we had challenge trials to get more confidence in our vaccines early on. My 2 cents is that society has embra

About 4 months too late. Could have saved lives if we had challenge trials to get more confidence in our vaccines early on. My 2 cents is that society has embraced deontological ethics over consequentialism in this pandemic to its detriment. You can't bake a cake without cracking some eggs.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
Interesting take, though I wouldn't call deontological ethics the problem here. Rather, it's that someone choosing to become infected is regarded as "wrong". It's part of a broader trend towards the nanny-state view that people should not be able to do "stupid things" that hurt primarily themselves. Another good example is drug use: marijuana legalization is really driven more by people believing that it is less harmful than by a shift towards letting people do what they want. As long as people give informed consent, choosing to become infected should not be regarded as wrong.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  Hmm. Although I think the nanny state is real and I hate it as much as anyone, I think this is more about people in FDA-like organizations facing perverse incentives: if they recommend doing a thing and that thing kills people, then they suffer, but if they recommend doing nothing—that is, they use the force of the law to stop people from doing something—and that leads to people dying, then they do not suffer. As a result, they are heavily biased towards obstructionism. There has been some effort to estimate the net impact of the FDA, and, for example, to compare the number of people who have died due to delays of livesaving drugs vs the worst cases of bad drugs getting into the market. https://www.fdareview.org/issues/theory-evidence-and-examples-of-fda-harm/ https://www.fdareview.org/issues/theory-evidence-and-example... cites a bunch of studies—many of whose links have rotted, so you'll want the Internet Archive, e.g.: http://web.archive.org/web/20100603223422/http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj5n1/cj5n1-10.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20100603223422/http://www.cato.or... . The second link makes a case that the first number is significantly higher. FDA kills. Remember that.
waterhouse 6y ago
It's a weak-man's deontological ethics. A serious philosophical debate would be about the ethics of taking 10k random people and forcibly or unknowingly injecting them with an experimental vaccine that, if successful, might save millions. This is about the ethics of allowing volunteers who know the risks to do it. I don't think any sensible person, deontological or otherwise, seriously advocates an ethical system that would disallow that.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  The phase 2 and 3 trials actually involve injecting ‘volunteers’ with the vaccine. There is no other way to test. I don’t quite see the fundamental difference between injecting 15000 people or 150000. Or 1500000. Especially if they really want it.

da_big_ghey 6y ago

Interesting take, though I wouldn't call deontological ethics the problem here. Rather, it's that someone choosing to become infected is regarded as "wrong". It's part of a broader trend towards the nanny-state view that people should not be able to do "stupid things" that hurt primarily themselves. Another good example is drug use: marijuana legalization is really driven more by people believing that it is less harmful than by a shift towards letting people do what they want. As long as people give informed consent, choosing to become infected should not be regarded as wrong.

waterhouse 6y ago
Hmm. Although I think the nanny state is real and I hate it as much as anyone, I think this is more about people in FDA-like organizations facing perverse incentives: if they recommend doing a thing and that thing kills people, then they suffer, but if they recommend doing nothing—that is, they use the force of the law to stop people from doing something—and that leads to people dying, then they do not suffer. As a result, they are heavily biased towards obstructionism. There has been some effort to estimate the net impact of the FDA, and, for example, to compare the number of people who have died due to delays of livesaving drugs vs the worst cases of bad drugs getting into the market. https://www.fdareview.org/issues/theory-evidence-and-examples-of-fda-harm/ https://www.fdareview.org/issues/theory-evidence-and-example... cites a bunch of studies—many of whose links have rotted, so you'll want the Internet Archive, e.g.: http://web.archive.org/web/20100603223422/http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj5n1/cj5n1-10.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20100603223422/http://www.cato.or... . The second link makes a case that the first number is significantly higher. FDA kills. Remember that.

waterhouse 6y ago

It's a weak-man's deontological ethics. A serious philosophical debate would be about the ethics of taking 10k random people and forcibly or unknowingly injecting them with an experimental vaccine that, if successful, might save millions. This is about the ethics of allowing volunteers who know the risks to do it. I don't think any sensible person, deontological or otherwise, seriously advocates an ethical system that would disallow that.

tinus_hn 6y ago
The phase 2 and 3 trials actually involve injecting ‘volunteers’ with the vaccine. There is no other way to test. I don’t quite see the fundamental difference between injecting 15000 people or 150000. Or 1500000. Especially if they really want it.