[ExI] Transhumanism and Politics

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 26/01/2008, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> Imagine the US goes for Michael Moore's idea and removes all profit motive
> from all things medical.  All the medical technology stocks plummet,
> investors take the cash elsewhere.

The idea is that if you get sick and need expensive medical treatment,
the government will pay for it out of the taxes it collects, just as
it pays for the police and the armed forces. This doesn't stop a
private company developing better or cheaper treatments to sell to the
government health providers, or even directly competing by setting up
a parallel private health service.

> How then does progress come about?  From
> government?  Governments don't pay much for this kind of thing, and even if
> they do, there are strings attached.

What about the $28 billion annual budget of the NIH:
http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm

> A good example of that is the recent
> stem cell research.  The government would only fund that which did not
> require the use of embryos.  So the privately funded research found an end
> run.

That's not a good example because "ethical" concerns have distorted
funding for that area of research. Normally it is as uncontroversial
as anything can ever be in government: giving people healthier, longer
lives is good. And while research that has the effect of improving
health is also more likely to be profitable, there are factors at play
in profit-motivated research such as an unwillingness to share
information with the wider scientific community and a temptation to
hide commercially damaging data which are less likely to be problems
in publicly funded research.




-- 
Stathis Papaioannou