What if mega-rich people could buy places on clinical trials?

Re:What if mega-rich people could buy places on clinical tri... by coldtea on Sunday November 02, 2014 @02:55AM (#8546006)

>It's unfortunate that this kind of innovative idea seems to illicit a knee-jerk negative response in terms of ethics.

Why, why let ethics mess up a perfectly profitable business idea?

>Of course, it would be ideal if resources were simply abundant and all these trials could be funded without giving special treatment to wealthy donors.

I don't think it's about resources, it's about their distribution. Such trials CAN be funded "without giving special treatment to wealthy donors" -- we're spending trillions more giving special treatmeants to wealthy people,(such as bailouts).

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Re:What if mega-rich people could buy places on clinical tri... by tempestn on Sunday November 02, 2014 @04:08AM (#8546133)

My point was that it isn't unethical; people just instinctively assume that it must be.

I'm not going to argue the public policy motivation behind bailouts as we could go on quite a tangent there, but the fact is that many clinical trials go unfunded. Obviously money exists somewhere, and the government could unilaterally decide that it's more valuable to fund clinical research than to bail out failing companies (or buy F35s, or build schools, or whatever). Thus far they haven't done so. This plan, on the other hand, could actually start saving people's lives immediately.

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