Comment by smoyer
13 years ago
"We believe access to accurate, affordable, real-time diagnostic information is a basic human right."
There's a bit of a conflict-of-interest if the company that makes money providing "X" declares that "X" is a basic human right. Even as a non-profit (most hospitals are non-profit, but that just means the corporation doesn't keep earnings), you can't justify that statement.
Agreed, although I don't mind so much whether they are making money off it- anyone making money off promoting freedom of speech is welcome to promote free speech as a human right.
But there's an issue of basic human right inflation thats slightly distasteful. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to own property without it being arbitrarily taken away for you by someone stronger. Those are basic human rights, and they don't have to be provided at someone else's cost.
I'm a strong supporter of an individual right to healthcare, provided by society/government, but that's a right agreed by social contract... Saying it in stronger terms risks devaluing in a a real way the more basic rights, which billions of people don't have.
Maybe I'm being pedantic given that this is PR copy...
Edit: carbocation said this 15 minutes ago, oops, upvoted
Who grants basic rights? If they're God-given, perhaps they're immutable. Nature grants no rights, and is perfectly willing to stand by idle while we slaughter each other by the millions.
The alternative is that basic rights are agreed upon by the society, and as the society matures and evolves, why shouldn't its understanding of what basic rights are change?
They're certainly not immutable, and do not exist outside of the context of a society. If you're alone, you have no rights whatsoever; they're something we "recognize" (or not) in other people.
The language we use is probably based on ideas that they supernaturally-granted or something like that... which is silliness, but I don't think we should change the habitual phrasings... people are more likely to treat each other humanely if they believe that rights are, you know rights, and the language encourages that.
What rights do you think have changed?
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"Rights" are the repackaging of religion for the secular age[1]. I know this is controversial because it is heretical, but consider the correspondence. Rights have no physical existence, only a social existence. Rights only matter through the exact same mechanisms that the wrath of Allah matters - if enough people believe in it and are motivated by it then it has force. In the past, Christian missionaries spread religion to the world with books, words, charity, and occasionally the sword. Today, the post-Christian West spreads human rights to the world through dollars and bullets (the carrots and sticks of foreign policy).
By imagining new human rights, a corporation marks themselves as a member of the ultra-religious, sort of the pharisees of our day. Not only do they obey God's commands, but they invent new commands to follow and by this show off their righteousness. Yes, this stance is made to atone for the sin of making profit - which is a minor sin in the West - "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of God" after all. Do not be mislead, liberalism (including the "classical liberalism" of Locke and Jefferson) is Christianity without God. Jefferson's Bible makes the point explicit.
Making new human rights is good business. A college education became a human right sometime in the last 50 years and today over $200 billion is spent on tuition each year in the USA alone. Yes, it is disingenuous, but also quite clever, for a corporation to position their product as a new human right.
Even the negative rights (freedom of speech, rights to property, etc.) require the positive right to protective services for those rights to have meaning. If we examine the history of such rights, we find they are rooted in English tradition. Essentially the modern idea of human rights is an idealization of 18th century English law. But "human rights" philosophy gives that law a mystical existence and rightness aside from the specific historical balance of power that led to its creation.
[1] What follows is ripped straight out of Nietzsche and Moldbug. Grazie, signori. I can recommend Moldbug's masterful trilogy on Idealism, which includes the weird new atheist religion-like philosophies:
a) http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-do-...
b) http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/idealis...
c) http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/our-pla...
Yes, positive rights that have real cost associated with them–rights which require that someone else do something for you–seem more like "part of the social contract" rather than a fundamental right.
Also, this company states it will still require doctors' orders so not sure how that squares with the rights talk.
You just have to ignore the "basic human right" stuff. Generally it just means "something we think a lot of people want," but phrasing it this way can comfort people who think that profit motive is evil (despite the fact that it seems to be the most economically efficient way to distribute resources).
It's getting really annoying though, and it demeans actual basic human rights and those that are denied them.
What they mean is that they want to provide testing in such an easy, affordable, useful way that it can become a basic human right/the standard. It is similar to how literacy could become a basic human right once books became cheap, accessibly written and easy to distribute. Should the company that brings about this change be able to expect people to demand its (and its competitors') services? That is what you are asking. I think it depends on if the new standard is actually a positive change. Since the new testing process seems in every way superior to current standard processes, I think that the change in behavior Theranos proposes to bring about is a healthy and beneficial one, and do not mind that they have the means to provide what they want to exist.
I would argue the right to literacy is already a human right. The price of books is orthogonal.
Before books were inexpensive and widely distributed, other means of communication fulfilled many of the functions of books. That is why I chose that example. If you believe that literacy is an eternal human right, substitute one of the other more economically dependent ones such as the right to a lawyer. I don't want my analogy to get in the way of my point for you.
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Was literacy a human right before humans invented the first written languages? What about the first few thousand years afterwards, where it was a technique used only by specialists and the materials to write were very expensive?
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but if a real estate agent claimed 'Shelter is a basic human right' in their marketing - would that constitute a conflict of interest? What about Evian adding 'water is a basic human right' to their labels?
The environment in which Theranos operates is highly regulated, often to the benefit of entrenched/concentrated incumbent providers rather than consumers.
So throwing in a little reminder that a cheaper/faster/on-demand offering has a 'right-of-access' dimension may be useful, as a balance against any FUD/appeals-to-traditional-gatekeeper-authority, coming from other slower/higher-cost providers.
They do say the right is for "access to...", rather than for "free provision of...".
People who make these statements don't fully understand what they are typing. I feel like in the modern English language, you almost have to over emphasize just to get your basic point across.
Here's an example of what you are talking about:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2392586/Oxford-Engli...