"it is difficult to grasp how someone with medical skills would do something this - the people behind the jabs KNEW the likely outcomes both short and long term and still went ahead with them anyway."
The difficulty resides within a category error, Miko.
There is a common misconception that there is no significant difference between medic…
"it is difficult to grasp how someone with medical skills would do something this - the people behind the jabs KNEW the likely outcomes both short and long term and still went ahead with them anyway."
The difficulty resides within a category error, Miko.
There is a common misconception that there is no significant difference between medical researchers and medical practitioners. The overlapping category of "possessing medical skills" is the confounding element.
A practitioner seeks the optimal outcome for the single, unique individual they are evaluating and treating.
A researcher seeks expansion of knowledge. Individual outcomes are of interest only insofar as they confirm or refute validity of the discovered knowledge.
There is some overlap between the two categories, because human motivations have multivariate aspects and origins, but the categories are distinct.
Further on in your excellent comment, you reference the monster Josef Mengele. He was a consummate researcher and his findings were quietly integrated with the corpus of scientific knowledge. By the time Pozos objected to the use of his data in 1988, it had already become part of the contributing information to innumerable other research efforts. And that's just the data. The organs and tissue his team provided to their contemporaries were used in countless other, unrelated, research projects and experiments.
I'm not saying that even a significant percentage of medical researchers are monsters like Mengele, but data is data and researchers must fulfill their purpose, which is to leverage ALL available information in pursuit of their objectives.
There is, however, one correlation that bears mentioning, and that is the seductive lure of arrogantly messianic motivation. In the context of a utilitarian calculus, such motivation incentivises the type of thinking that deliberately obscures misery and death, in pursuit of what is deemed a "noble" cause. If a treatment kills four people and heals six, it has achieved utilitarian efficacy; six is greater than four, and thus has the "greater good" been served.
I can recall no more vivid an example of the dangers associated with the above category error, Than the response to the Wuhan Coronavirus. Indeed, it's very existence may be the result of arrogantly messianic motives.
Anyway, thanks for your post, you have expressed the concerns of many, including myself.
I do not buy into the "I am researcher only and the data is the data" explanation. I have worked in research for over 20 years and I have been asked to look into things that were clearly aimed at unauthorised surveillance and target acquisition for missiles. In both cases I chose NOT to do it because I would not be able to sleep well at night knowing that my work would lead to something completely evil. The money was fantastic and so were the promotion incentives. In my case, it was not medically related research and I still did not do it. The fact that there are people out there with medical skills that have no morality and look at everything in terms of "pure data" only demonstrates that they are in the wrong field and should never be allowed to work in medicine ever. The "Do no harm" approach should be applicable to all not just the practitioners.
I'm going to suggest the possibility that your personal code of honor correlates with your presence in, and contributions to, forums such as this one, Miko.
"The "Do no harm" approach should be applicable to all not just the practitioners."
I tend to agree.
Your own experience of refusing to conduct research that, when successful, creates more evil in the world, appears to highlight one of the mechanisms that form what Arendt referred to as "the banality of evil."
Your refusal to participate in that sort of research is an example of why humanity is not beyond redemption. Others will succumb to the incentives and create misery and death, but while there remain people of conscience like you, hope remains.
Thank you for a thought-provoking response. The issue of utilitarianism in research (and life, generally,) is a complex one. It has nuances and layers of meaning that require honest exploration.
There is an argument for maintaining the categorical distinction between practitioner and researcher. Assuming that argument valid, just for the sake of discussion, we come back to the classic trolley problem. "Do no harm" equates to refusing to pull the lever, regardless of how many people are tied to each of the two tracks.
The comparison of the response to medical threat with war, seems to mandate a similar utilitarian framework. It's the classic "some must die so that a majority can survive" calculus.
What most of us want, I think, is honesty from those who make those decisions. There remains the confounding factor that refusal to decide is a decision in and of itself.
The harmful response to threat was a purely political one, assuming honesty from the research community. The researchers provide the calculus, the agents of the state apply it to the decision-making process.
On one side of the equation was the virus, on the other side were economic and medical considerations (leaving aside the political freedom aspects.) What we experienced were political decisions informed by means of ignoring every factor but the virus. This resulted in an imbalance of harms. Those entrusted with the trolley lever never even counted the number of people tied to each track and then pulled the lever anyway.
"it is difficult to grasp how someone with medical skills would do something this - the people behind the jabs KNEW the likely outcomes both short and long term and still went ahead with them anyway."
The difficulty resides within a category error, Miko.
There is a common misconception that there is no significant difference between medical researchers and medical practitioners. The overlapping category of "possessing medical skills" is the confounding element.
A practitioner seeks the optimal outcome for the single, unique individual they are evaluating and treating.
A researcher seeks expansion of knowledge. Individual outcomes are of interest only insofar as they confirm or refute validity of the discovered knowledge.
There is some overlap between the two categories, because human motivations have multivariate aspects and origins, but the categories are distinct.
Further on in your excellent comment, you reference the monster Josef Mengele. He was a consummate researcher and his findings were quietly integrated with the corpus of scientific knowledge. By the time Pozos objected to the use of his data in 1988, it had already become part of the contributing information to innumerable other research efforts. And that's just the data. The organs and tissue his team provided to their contemporaries were used in countless other, unrelated, research projects and experiments.
I'm not saying that even a significant percentage of medical researchers are monsters like Mengele, but data is data and researchers must fulfill their purpose, which is to leverage ALL available information in pursuit of their objectives.
There is, however, one correlation that bears mentioning, and that is the seductive lure of arrogantly messianic motivation. In the context of a utilitarian calculus, such motivation incentivises the type of thinking that deliberately obscures misery and death, in pursuit of what is deemed a "noble" cause. If a treatment kills four people and heals six, it has achieved utilitarian efficacy; six is greater than four, and thus has the "greater good" been served.
I can recall no more vivid an example of the dangers associated with the above category error, Than the response to the Wuhan Coronavirus. Indeed, it's very existence may be the result of arrogantly messianic motives.
Anyway, thanks for your post, you have expressed the concerns of many, including myself.
I do not buy into the "I am researcher only and the data is the data" explanation. I have worked in research for over 20 years and I have been asked to look into things that were clearly aimed at unauthorised surveillance and target acquisition for missiles. In both cases I chose NOT to do it because I would not be able to sleep well at night knowing that my work would lead to something completely evil. The money was fantastic and so were the promotion incentives. In my case, it was not medically related research and I still did not do it. The fact that there are people out there with medical skills that have no morality and look at everything in terms of "pure data" only demonstrates that they are in the wrong field and should never be allowed to work in medicine ever. The "Do no harm" approach should be applicable to all not just the practitioners.
I'm going to suggest the possibility that your personal code of honor correlates with your presence in, and contributions to, forums such as this one, Miko.
"The "Do no harm" approach should be applicable to all not just the practitioners."
I tend to agree.
Your own experience of refusing to conduct research that, when successful, creates more evil in the world, appears to highlight one of the mechanisms that form what Arendt referred to as "the banality of evil."
Your refusal to participate in that sort of research is an example of why humanity is not beyond redemption. Others will succumb to the incentives and create misery and death, but while there remain people of conscience like you, hope remains.
Thank you for a thought-provoking response. The issue of utilitarianism in research (and life, generally,) is a complex one. It has nuances and layers of meaning that require honest exploration.
There is an argument for maintaining the categorical distinction between practitioner and researcher. Assuming that argument valid, just for the sake of discussion, we come back to the classic trolley problem. "Do no harm" equates to refusing to pull the lever, regardless of how many people are tied to each of the two tracks.
The comparison of the response to medical threat with war, seems to mandate a similar utilitarian framework. It's the classic "some must die so that a majority can survive" calculus.
What most of us want, I think, is honesty from those who make those decisions. There remains the confounding factor that refusal to decide is a decision in and of itself.
The harmful response to threat was a purely political one, assuming honesty from the research community. The researchers provide the calculus, the agents of the state apply it to the decision-making process.
On one side of the equation was the virus, on the other side were economic and medical considerations (leaving aside the political freedom aspects.) What we experienced were political decisions informed by means of ignoring every factor but the virus. This resulted in an imbalance of harms. Those entrusted with the trolley lever never even counted the number of people tied to each track and then pulled the lever anyway.