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The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

writingruxandrabio.com

91–100 of 192 posts

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#91

I too, like everyone one else, often hate the tedious and often absurd, effort that bureaucratic procedures sometimes require, but this story doesn't make any sense to me. We're talking about a guy who's used AI to make personalized ground-breaking medicine for his dog but says he spent three months typing a 100-pages long document for the red tape . In reality, current AI technology isn't particularly designed to he…

> I'm sorry but how does that story not smells like complete bullshit to anyone reading this?

Because it strokes the anti-establishment anti-intellectual and anti-bureaucracy zones all at once, and a lot of nerds (with love) are contrarians. Us software guys like nothing better than a story about how a smart ass with a computer undid a problem seemingly created by institutions out of whole cloth.

I'm calling absolute 100% bullshit.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#92

Am I going crazy here? A completely random person tells AI to generate a novel vaccine/compound, and people are actually upset that there were 3 months of regulatory hurdle he had to jump through before he was able to start injecting this new compound into an live animal's bloodstream? Really?

It's an animal, and a terminally ill one at that. What's your worst case scenario?

Is it that the dog dies faster than it would have?

That's not actually an issue. We already have vets who just put terminally ill pets down.

So, who does the bureaucracy help? Who's protected by it? Why is it there at all?

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#94

As someone who has looked at things like Renewable energy deployments within the UK, this is a pattern that seems to be quite pervasive across all industries. The byzantine web of planning approvals, goose counting, public outcry that you have to deal with to deploy essentially a relatively small solar farm is monstrous. What that results with is that the only people capable of creating & managing these processes hav…

I'd say the underlying problem is our capital-first regulatory environments. For the topic of the original article, anyone can see that it would be reasonable for a guy who loves his dog to make what appears to be a prudent medical decision in her interest, trying out an unknown vaccine without any sort of government involvement - and a government that prevents this is unjust. But with the way the system is set up, if this were legally sound it would then automatically imply that a corpo scaling up the situation to thousands of dogs that it (the corpo) doesn't care about would also be okay. The fundamental problem is that there is no recognition of scale (because small scale operators don't have the pull with the government to fix the regulations).

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#95
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what a lot of people seemingly struggle to understand. Inaction is not a safe action. Inaction has a price. And sometimes a death toll too.

It depends on your point of view. For the person deciding on giving permission they will not be thanked for allowing it, but might well be blamed if something goes horribly wrong.

That's kind of the issue with a lot of bureaucratic oversight. It often produces systems that aren't at all interested in being streamlined, in letting things that should happen happen. It produces systems where compliance is a drag on the one doing things, and the default state is "forbidden".

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#97
post #33

That article is exactly on point. There is a process in place for the express reason of slowing and blocking anything that will bring about positive, meaningful solutions and potential cures to the human condition.

Because the old state of affairs had desperate people being experimented on by opportunists, charlatans and fraudsters for money. There's work to be done balancing the equities of people with terminal diagnoses but lets not pretend there's no point to the roadblocks to human experimentation on the dying.

That sounds about right. Lots of abuses have been perpetrated by opportunists, charlatans, fraudsters all for money, as you put it. I just want to make sure we correctly distinguish what is meant by "opportunists, charlatans, fraudsters."

In the spirit of full transparency, I've listed some of the most well-known cases. Others, due to the Iron Curtain and similar curtains are hard to document, due to lack of visual inspection. Just the same I've listed them for transparency's sake:

Western Bloc:

Tuskegee Syphilis Study (US, 1932–1972)

Project MKUltra (US/CIA, 1953–1973) Human radiation experiments (US, 1940s–1970s)

Porton Down nerve/chemical tests (UK, 1950s–1960s)

Ewen Cameron brainwashing/LSD experiments (Canada, 1950s–1960s)

Eastern Bloc:

Soviet Gulag prisoner chemical/medical experiments (USSR, 1930s–1950s)

Punitive psychiatry experiments on dissidents (USSR, 1950s–1980s)

Pre-1940s Germany:

Nazi eugenics forced sterilizations (1933 Hereditary Health Law; ~400,000 citizens)

Pre-1940s Japan:

Unit 731 biological/chemical experiments (est. 1936; pathogen injections, early vivisections on prisoners)

Axis Powers:

Nazi Germany: concentration camp medical experiments (Dachau/Auschwitz hypothermia, twins, sterilization; mainly 1941–1945)

Imperial Japan: Unit 731 & affiliates (vivisections, plague/anthrax tests; ~3,000+ direct deaths, 200k+ from field use)

Fascist Italy: No major documented equivalent programs

Asia:

Japanese-occupied territories (China, Manchuria, Korea, etc.): Unit 731 satellites (biological warfare tests on local citizens/POWs)

By the way, all the above instances are part of history.

Greed is greed, whether "Capitalist, Socialist or Communist-oriented." In my view there is no distinction between modern day and historic "opportunists, charlatans, and fraudsters." Greed is Greed!

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#98
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, running very large trials in a short time is very high effort.

Worth it

It's a trade-off: better info versus handling an immediate crisis. If it's not an immediate crisis, you can take more time.

Engineering is trade-offs.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#99
Regulatory systems need omsbuds within the government who can ask for help and explanations from all the agencies regulating a project yet are (primarily) accountable for helping projects succeed as soon as possible and (secondarily) responsible for providing transparent feedback to those agencies and the public where regulation is malfunctioning.

Re: The bureaucracy blocking the chance at a cure

#100
post #55
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"putting stickers on things is criminal damage deserving of prison time" is no better of a position But we should probably pay attention to what was written on the stickers.

America literally jails people for quoting the US president The UK jails people for extreme incitement

Extreme incitement to changing government immigration policy.
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