Re:“I Want to Know What Code Is Running Inside My Body”
by woodruffw on Monday August 08, 2016 @09:33PM
(#12251975)
They are not sound in the context of human welfare.
We do not allow food companies to hide the ingredients of their products, because we know that companies (in the interest of profit) will fail to inform consumers about the dangers of eating unhealthily. Similarly, we do not allow meat producers to leave their meat ungraded because it endangers their "competitive advantage" - we understand (empirically) that doing so leads to food contamination and otherwise preventable disease.
Your choice of proprietary medicine as a counterexample is an interesting one. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States has a long history of "protecting its competitive advantage" at the cost of individual welfare - consider how frequently "reformulations" of the same base chemical are patented to continue milking a lucrative product that could improve the lives of thousands if genericized.
Perhaps even more pointedly, consider the fact that we deem it acceptable (and necessary) that the FDA step in and regulate the release of new drugs. Is there a valuable distinction to be drawn between the sort of regulation and evaluation that the FDA does and the sort that would be possible if programmers could openly evaluate medical devices?
We do not allow food companies to hide the ingredients of their products, because we know that companies (in the interest of profit) will fail to inform consumers about the dangers of eating unhealthily. Similarly, we do not allow meat producers to leave their meat ungraded because it endangers their "competitive advantage" - we understand (empirically) that doing so leads to food contamination and otherwise preventable disease.
Your choice of proprietary medicine as a counterexample is an interesting one. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States has a long history of "protecting its competitive advantage" at the cost of individual welfare - consider how frequently "reformulations" of the same base chemical are patented to continue milking a lucrative product that could improve the lives of thousands if genericized.
Perhaps even more pointedly, consider the fact that we deem it acceptable (and necessary) that the FDA step in and regulate the release of new drugs. Is there a valuable distinction to be drawn between the sort of regulation and evaluation that the FDA does and the sort that would be possible if programmers could openly evaluate medical devices?