4 ms·

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".

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

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.