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by altairprime
5 days ago
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Her distinctiveness has been added the collective. That's what experimental medicine is for! So if you approach this story from an amoral "ethics-free" standpoint (which is easy for me but, thankfully, difficult for most) their money has technically benefited human science, however problematic the circumstances. I have some serious glee at seeing the quantity of moral output being generated in this discussion. HN's culture is largely Bay Area tech, which has also been a key innovation driver in ethics-free amorality such as Meta and Theranos. May our own reflection in this medical science funhouse mirror encourage us to express such intense moral and ethical concern at not only our tech social media site HN, but more importantly at our often-amoral tech workplaces as well. |
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I'd argue it's marginal. For some sort of scientific benefit, at least, new knowledge (e.g. what to do or what not to do) is needed.
* For the experts involved, the approach, while novel in historical terms, was application of known techniques. Further, to prove the treatment, they'd have needed a positive outcome, which sadly wasn't the case. So, some technical benefit here, but hindered by the negative outcome (and the possible retraction of the paper).
* They haven't really learned much more about what not to do, as some of the major criticisms of the study were that because of the approach taken and (arguably) the corners cut, it was predictably dangerous. Again, all of this was known - it was the failure to apply established principles that was the problem.
* It appears that (apart from this article) no details of the exact case have been released. A thorough write-up of the science and the clinical study would possibly add some benefit to science, but that's not been done.