Society decided, for now, the upsides aren't worth the downsides.

Oil is another parallel where society is currently just at the point where we are starting to not value the upsides over the downsides.

Comparing growth in data storage versus energy usage per capita is interesting.

Even if you look back to the founding of the U.S., the change in energy use per person is actually only a few fold, definitely less than an order of magnitude.

Harder to compare quantity of data storage but the change would seem much larger. How much data is there, per U.S. person?

Currently has value with externalized downsides.

I think the word "can" is acting as a euphemism or term of elision here, since "longitudinal data in healthcare" includes things like the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment.