Huh, I thought that most of the disagreement between people around these parts and bioethicists is in the direction of people around here being more pro-freedoms of human subjects/patients. (Freedoms aren’t exactly the same as protections, but I interpret small-c conservative as being more about freedoms.)
Examples:
Right to sell my organs
Right to select my kids on the basis of non-medical features
Right to access unapproved treatments
Right to die if I am of sound mind and wish to do so
Right to sign up for arbitrary medical trials/studies, including being compensated and including potentially dangerous medical trials/studies. (Subject to sound mind constraints and maybe extortion constraints.)
Generally, I personally think that much more freedom in medicine would be better.
(In fact, totally free-for-all would plausibly be better than status quo I think though I’m pretty uncertain.)
I agree that there is a disagreement around how utilitarian the medical system should be vs some more fairness based principle.
However, if you go fully in the direction of individual liberties, government involvement in the medical system doesn’t matter much. E.g., in a simple system like:
Redistribute wealth as desired
People can buy whatever health care they want and sign up for whatever clinical trials they want with virtually no government regulation. (Clinical trials require actually informed consent.)
The state doesn’t need to make any tradeoffs in health care as it isn’t involved. Places like (e.g.) hospitals can do whatever they want with respect to prioritizing care and they could in principle compete etc.
(I’m not claiming that fully in the direction of individual liberties is the right move, e.g. it seems like people are often irrational about health care and hospitals often have monopolies which can cause issues.)
Sorry, that was ambiguous on my part. There’s a differentiation between research ethics issues (how trials are run, etc.) and clinical ethics (medical aid in dying, accessing unapproved treatments, how to treat a patient with X complicated issue, etc.). My work focuses on the former, not the latter, so I can’t speak much to that. I meant “conservative” in the sense of hesitance to adjust existing norms or systems in research ethics oversight and, for example, a very strong default orientation towards any measures that reduce risk (or seem to reduce risk) for research participants.
Huh, I thought that most of the disagreement between people around these parts and bioethicists is in the direction of people around here being more pro-freedoms of human subjects/patients. (Freedoms aren’t exactly the same as protections, but I interpret small-c conservative as being more about freedoms.)
Examples:
Right to sell my organs
Right to select my kids on the basis of non-medical features
Right to access unapproved treatments
Right to die if I am of sound mind and wish to do so
Right to sign up for arbitrary medical trials/studies, including being compensated and including potentially dangerous medical trials/studies. (Subject to sound mind constraints and maybe extortion constraints.)
Generally, I personally think that much more freedom in medicine would be better.
(In fact, totally free-for-all would plausibly be better than status quo I think though I’m pretty uncertain.)
I agree that there is a disagreement around how utilitarian the medical system should be vs some more fairness based principle.
However, if you go fully in the direction of individual liberties, government involvement in the medical system doesn’t matter much. E.g., in a simple system like:
Redistribute wealth as desired
People can buy whatever health care they want and sign up for whatever clinical trials they want with virtually no government regulation. (Clinical trials require actually informed consent.)
The state doesn’t need to make any tradeoffs in health care as it isn’t involved. Places like (e.g.) hospitals can do whatever they want with respect to prioritizing care and they could in principle compete etc.
(I’m not claiming that fully in the direction of individual liberties is the right move, e.g. it seems like people are often irrational about health care and hospitals often have monopolies which can cause issues.)
Sorry, that was ambiguous on my part. There’s a differentiation between research ethics issues (how trials are run, etc.) and clinical ethics (medical aid in dying, accessing unapproved treatments, how to treat a patient with X complicated issue, etc.). My work focuses on the former, not the latter, so I can’t speak much to that. I meant “conservative” in the sense of hesitance to adjust existing norms or systems in research ethics oversight and, for example, a very strong default orientation towards any measures that reduce risk (or seem to reduce risk) for research participants.