Medical Rights and Medical Wrongs

Recently, I saw a news article that talked about how a scientist testing a treatment on themselves violated bioethical standards.

Generally, bioethics, regardless of the party in power, tend to be poorly thought out ethical standards that are neither welfare enhancing nor do they uphold good standards of behavior. As a field, unfortunately bioethics is captured by a belief that people’s medical decisions must be standard, and by standard, I primarily mean non-voluntary.

In general, the biggest problem is that bioethics are applied at social rather than individual levels. Instead of asking what society should do, a better standard is what should individuals do.

Individuals should broadly do what they think is right, provided they don’t violate the rights of other individuals. That means in general, consenting adults should be able to do things that work.

Here are 3 examples of which bioethics fails this test.

First, bioethics prevents people from being paid to willingly get infected and by extension prevent the broader population from achieving health goals.

A second example of why bioethics is wrong is that it prevents testing on embryos or people with terminal conditions because it apparently violates dignity. This is bad because it usurps the rights of the individuals for an ethical system that doesn’t help anyone.

A third example is that it prevents commodification of organs, potentially killing millions of people. If it was only so easy as to be able to purchase organs, you’d see more people donate. Since bioethics thinks the human body is sacred, people die preventable deaths.

Broadly speaking, bioethics is used to look at issues that might make people squeamish, is reflexively anti-market, and discourages welfare enhancing interventions.

There are few if any fields that are more harmful to human flourishing.