These early adopters found out what happened when a cutting-edge marvel became an obsolete gadget... inside their bodies.
  • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    201·
    7 months ago

    Yeah… oof. I can’t even imagine the potential liability nightmare of a third party trying to service them to keep them functional.

    Maybe markets aren’t the best way to heal people? Idk even if you insist on doing it maybe governments hold the patents and license them out for production or something?

    Ephemeral legal structures (companies) and permanent modifications to someone’s body seem like a match made in hell tbh. Don’t get me wrong, I get why you would take a chance but this is gonna happen increasingly unless we fix now we approach prothesis.

      • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        7 months ago

        I uh don’t think all medicine in software ;)

        I hope that even in market driven hell we eventually wake up to the fact that companies funding the last few months of a few hundred thousand years of research efforts shouldn’t entitle them to use it exclusively.

        If nothing else belongs to everyone surely we can at least agree knowledge does? Like even people that spruke capitalism have to see how fucked it is to swoop in after generations of education and work and say “yoink”. Then put a chip in someone who just wants a fuller life, restructure, and say “too bad so sad, line no go up enough”.

        • Helmic [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          52·
          7 months ago

          actually kill people for not releasing source code for medical devices, make it an actual capital offense. if someone cannot at will see the code in their own body, then their basic bodily autonomy has been undermined.

          • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            1·
            7 months ago

            That’s pretty blood thirsty. I doubt there are many people who are caught up in this being like “mwahahahaha screw the fools that trusted us”. It’s something that emerges from the legal structures we enforce.

            Like maybe there are scientists who want to help these people but would be committing a serious crime if they released schematics and such. Even the founder probably wanted to get rich yes, but probably also help people.

            I don’t think we need to be killing people and it’s kinda frightening that you go straight for that, I suspect if we dissolve the fucked up laws that force this sort of insane cruelty to happen almost everyone would be happy to work in an open and collaborative manner.

            I never met a scientist who enjoyed handing over their work to some company.