131–140 of 145 posts
"Tragic" is the only word that does justice to the events described by this article. The most interesting aspect of the story for me is how the company's culture has changed for the worst over time. Johnson & Johnson was started and for many decades was run by sincerely idealistic do-no-evil entrepreneurs, who wanted to focus on "patients first and profits last"... but now this business is run by executives who seem…
Another thing is that somebody needs to go to jail. And it should be from the top of the chain to the bottom. If you're a sales rep dealing with pamphlets which you've explicitly been told can't be left out in case of regulators, your options should be "whistle blow" or be held accountable along with the rest of that chain.
In a country with over two million people in jail you'd think we could nail one of these bastards. It's just so gross.
Then there's all the issues with the US Taxpayer directly funding vast amounts of the research that goes into these pharmaceuticals and not receiving anything in return (except for exorbitant unregulated health care costs). The taxpayers need to benefit from the corporate profits which come from taxpayer funded research.
I'm not exactly sure what to think about all the advertisements for drugs on our tvs and to our doctors. Most of me thinks it's disgusting. I'm not one to think there should be a profit motive in healthcare as it can lead to awful stories like this (I'm done with chapter one, I figure I can do one a day). Unfortunately these are, at the moment, opinions, and I can in no way fully flesh them out, offer concrete evidence as to why it should be any other way, or really truly expand on the issues. That'd be a post of it's own and a few weeks research I think.
Something needs to change though.
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Given that the whole purpose of a state is to compel people to do things I'd argue that the purpose of the state is to prevent people from doing certain things. To illustrate, most of our laws are "Thou shall not..." versus "Thou must..." to punish "bad" behavior instead of compel "good" behavior. I'm wondering what basis you have for drawing the line there. Personal autonomy. Your body, your choice. Or why a simple…
> Can the state compel everyone to be a vegan unless they can show proof of a medical condition that would make it unworkable? Consider that the state does compel you not to kill humans. If non-humans were accorded similar rights (which is a separate discussion) then yes, they most certainly could. EDIT: wording
The state regulates the killing of humans. If you forcibly enter my home with a perceived intent to harm me or my family and without any right to do so, I will kill you and never run afoul of my state's laws.
If you attack me and I find myself in fear of death or grave injury, I will kill you and never run afoul of my state's laws.
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> But making coverage mandatory also ignores long term second-order effects whereby organization becomes completely disconnected from the people it serves I don't see how you can argue that it ignores this in the case where people advocating for mandatory fire protection coverage advocate that the agency through which the fire protection is provided be democratically accountable to the people in the covered area, whi…
I then elaborated: > (which is usually then handwaved away with the wisdom-of-crowds fallacy). If either markets were perfect or centralized control (in this case via democracy) were perfect, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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The anti-vaxxers would have a point even if J&J wasn't involved in shady activity. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I was vaccinated. I had my children vaccinated. I just hold the position that the power of the state shouldn't be used to compel people to inject substances into their bodies, even if we think we have a good reason for doing it. I'm not looking to delve too deeply into the politics of it but there are good reas…
Given that the whole purpose of a state is to compel people to do things, I'm wondering what basis you have for drawing the line there. Or why a simple waiver process wouldn't be sufficient to handle those who object. In general, I would argue that a state has the authority to compel someone into doing anything that has been sufficiently demonstrated to be a good decision, and so the onus is on the anti-vaxxer to sho…
Taking your argument to the logical extreme, your argument implies that the state has the authority to impregnate women.
Not arguing against vaccines, (I'm pro vaccines), but I'm against giving this much power to the government. Government abuse of power is always a question of "when and how", never a question of "if".
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I then elaborated: > (which is usually then handwaved away with the wisdom-of-crowds fallacy). If either markets were perfect or centralized control (in this case via democracy) were perfect, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Democratic accountability to the served population deals directly with disconnection from the served population without appeal to either "wisdom of the crowds" (it doesn't rely on the "crowds" being correct, it relies only on them being the population served) or the "perfection" of centralized control (which seems to be a completely different issue, that might be worthy of discussing, but isn't the one you said was i…
So yes democracy does create a connection between centralized government and the body politic. It's just a bit of a tenuous connection that addresses only gross problems that are understood (the inherent limitation of any centralized planning) by more than 51% of people.
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> the far extreme of what mandatory vaccination proponents actually seek Vaccination proponents seek vaccine-preventable diseases to be largely prevented. What do you mean by "mandatory vaccination proponents" if not the previous sentence you just dismissed as a straw man. Why are you trying so hard to be combative?
> What do you mean by "mandatory vaccination proponents" People actually supporting the idea that government should mandate vaccination of children in some circumstances; the real people on the other side of the actual government policy debate from anti-vaxxers.
Which, in fact, proposed laws--including the one passed in California--do not do. Yes. There are significant consequences to not vaccinating children (where there is no medical necessity) but it's not mandatory under any circumstances.
By and large, vaccination proponents recognize that the key is to hit certain vaccination percentages for herd immunity reasons. At least in some areas of the country (e.g. Marin County), allowing personal belief opt-outs without consequence do not achieve those percentages. The assumption is that requiring vaccination to attend public schools (absent medical reasons to opt-out) will reduce the number of children who do not get vaccinated.
"Tragic" is the only word that does justice to the events described by this article. The most interesting aspect of the story for me is how the company's culture has changed for the worst over time. Johnson & Johnson was started and for many decades was run by sincerely idealistic do-no-evil entrepreneurs, who wanted to focus on "patients first and profits last"... but now this business is run by executives who seem…
"This is a huge challenge for successful founders: how does one ensure that a company's culture and values don't degrade long after the original team is gone?" More than just a founder problem. This has been a defining problem for empires throughout history: how to make sure the next guy doesn't mess it up.
In another way I'm also reminded by the family companies (hotels?) in Japan that have been going for a thousand years, where they adopt grown people into the family to continue the family business.
The tragedy here goes far beyond the direct damage to the patents who were prescribed this vile stuff off-label. There's also the collateral damage to the medical establishment that supports this -- can anyone argue that the anti-vaxxers don't have a point when they're on about exactly this sort of profit-driven evil from Big Pharma? I myself am an anti-anti-vaxxer (a pro-vaxxer?) who actually supports state-mandated…
Please don't take HN threads on off-topic flamewar tangents.
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Russia has all this and its GDP per capita is one quarter ours. Not to mention the fall of the Soviet Union, etc. Yeah so "just having resources equals success" is asinine. Not to mention all the academic research on the success of open markets, low regulation, etc.
Japan also does pretty well with very little of those innate advantages.
1) Strong rule of law 2) Political and economic freedom 3) Regulations that focus on reducing information asymmetry.
There are plenty of examples: America, Canada, parts of Europe, Chile, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. The rapid development of Eastern Europe (particularly Poland) is a great case-study.
But this simple truth is a threat to a lot of entrenched interests, who will fight and deny it every step of the way.