[Gormo]

> Counterfactuals are hard, but I wonder if anyone has studied whether or not the FDA is actually a net saver of lives.

When did utilitarianism become an acceptable justification for usurping the right of individuals to make their own risk-reward tradeoffs?

[ataggart]

Arguing from principle likely won't get you very far with people arguing from assumed utility.

[Gormo]

I'm not arguing from principle as much as I'm pointing out that the utility value is itself subjective with respect to each individual; I'm criticizing the socio-political doctrine of utilitarianism which pursues the "greatest good for the greatest number" in accordance with a single, generalized definition of "good" applied to all, irrespective of the divergent preferences of each.

Treating individuals' health as something to be optimized with respect to a putative macro-level abstraction of society as opposed to treating individuals' health as something to be optimized with respect to each individual's particular happiness is the problem here.

The post I replied to was also an implicit argument from principle, in treating the net-lives-saved measurement, with respect to the aggregate population, as the overriding decision criterion. It's just that this is a bad principle in that it gives "saving" the life of someone living in misery due to an uncurable but not terminal disease the same moral weight as curing someone of a terminal disease, and gives the potential death of someone consciously willing to risk death in an attempt to alleviate suffering the same moral weight as the potential death of someone denied access to a treatment they were willing to try and which might have saved their lives.