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>dthe truth is that if human civilization has existed without a lifesaving treatment for hundreds of thousands of years, delaying it for a couple more to better
by xxpor 3y ago
>dthe truth is that if human civilization has existed without a lifesaving treatment for hundreds of thousands of years, delaying it for a couple more to better under its effectiveness is the right decision for the public good.
I don't understand how that's the counterfactual though. Let's say the patents we're talking about are ones that in the early 90s had a 90%+ chance of dying without Lipitor. Not giving them the drug simply to have a control group is just as morally fraught as giving people completely untested drugs that kills them. To suggest otherwise is just status quo bias.
It's clearly a complex issue where you draw the line, but we should be able to have an intelligent conversation as a society about probabilities and tradeoffs.
- paxys 3y agoPeople who don’t get a drug while it is under development aren’t in a control group. People in a clinical trial who don’t get the drug are in the control group. Yes it is a morally tricky situation, but the people who signed up are aware of it. Everyone else simply doesn’t get the drug because the drug hasn’t been approved yet.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoThe point that people are making is that it's the trolley problem. Yes you actively kill one person by making a drug available prematurely but you kill 5 people through inaction otherwise.
- paxys 3y agoMore like - you kill 5 people through inaction or kill tens of thousands because the drug wasn’t able to be studied correctly before release.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoYou claim a specific belief here about the odds ratios, but hypothetically if the odds ratio were more similar to what I claimed than what you claimed, would you change your opinion?
- juve1996 3y agoIt's not the trolley problem because in the trolley problem both outcomes are clear to the decider.