A lot of people are going rogue at the moment. Sarah Palin started it, of course, when she went rogue during the Presidential campaign and then wrote a book about it.But everyone's at it now. Facebook's gone rogue, Wall Street's gone rogue, even someone's goldfish may have gone rogue.
Or did they? To say that someone's gone rogue is to say that they've done something they shouldn't have, because they were committed to playing by some set of rules. Which means that if you think someone's gone rogue, you're implying that you trusted them in the first place.
When Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy Führer, stole a plane and flew to Scotland in the middle of WW2 in a crazy bid to make peace with Britain, that was going rogue. But Palin, Facebook, and Wall Street didn't so much go rogue, as stay rogue. They were just being themselves.
When John McCain picked Palin as his running mate, either he should have known how she'd act, or (more likely) he should have realized that he didn't know, that she was an unknown quantity. When you gave a private, for-profit company access to all your personal details, you shouldn't be surprised when it turns out that they're using them to make profit.
That's all pretty minor stuff, but there's more: if you voted for the politicians whose policy was to deregulate finance and let banks speculate wildly with your money (i.e. pretty much all mainstream parties), you can hardly blame the banks for speculating wildly with your money. Banks exist to try and make a profit, with your money. They don't owe you anything. If you don't want them to take certain risks with your money, that's a political issue.
Likewise, all too often you hear people bemoaning Big Pharma for pushing drugs at people who don't need them, or suppressing the results of trials, or whatever. But unless a drug company is actually breaking the law, you have no grounds for complaint: they're just trying to make a profit, which is what they're for, being private companies. They're rogues by design.
If you don't like drug companies pushing drugs at consumers, get your politicians to ban direct-to-consumer advertising. If you don't want them hiding the results of clinical trials, get your politicians to force them to reveal all their data (like this). It's a political issue.
9 comments:
I have to disagree with you here... I think the fact that people complain loudly about Facebook and Big Pharma is a pretty big incentive for corporations to shape up. Facebook isn't calling emergency meetings to discuss their privacy policies because a few people sent letters to their congressional representatives; they're calling them because there's been a vociferous response on the web over the past couple of weeks. You may be right that it's naive to think that corporations have our best interests at heart, but that certainly doesn't mean people have no right or justification for bitching loudly when a corporation does something particularly egregious. Often, that's the best way to effect change in a corporation's policies.
Hmm... you have a point re: Facebook, since Facebook clearly do take the issue seriously. But I don't think bitching about Big Pharma is going to change their behaviour (unless the bitching carries an undertone of "and if you don't, we'll pass a law and make you do this")... although if there are counterexamples I'd be interested to see them.
I suppose the difference is that Facebook is one company with rivals, including open source & non-profit rivals, so it's quite possible for people to abandon Facebook and move to, say, MySpace. Well not MySpace. Something good.
Whereas the different pharmaceutical companies are all up to the same tricks; it's not as if only Eli Lilly hide data or only Servier medicalize normality; it's a problem with the industry as a whole; and only legislation can fix that, I think.
A bit more on the Facebook topic. I don't think you're quite right to say:
"When you gave a private, for-profit company access to all your personal details, you shouldn't be surprised when it turns out that they're using them to make profit."
The 'surprise' is the degree to which they have reneged on their original principles, and disregarded the opinions of their users utterly while doing so. From their Principles:
"People should have the freedom to decide with whom they will share their information, and to set privacy controls to protect those choices."
It hasn't just 'turned out' that they're profiting from the information, they've changed the rules from under us. Again. And they're not even abiding by their own rules!
This infographic by Matt Mckeon shows what they've done, and while it is possible to block most of this dissemination, it's not possible to block all of it. Even removing the information now is too late, because it was 'let loose' on the net without anyone asking us (the users) and so it is already out there.
NS wrote:
"...suppressing the results of trials, or whatever. But unless a drug company is actually breaking the law, you have no grounds for complaint..."
Erm, saying a drug works when it's a pile of shit (and suppressing trials results as part of that), with the intention that one profit from the lie is fraud - it's the very definition of fraud. Off-label marketing is also unlawful. The issue appears not to be with finding illegality for the authorities to prosecute, but with said authorities finding the appetite to pursue the matter (eg, the recent decision to pursue AZ for civil damages, rather than a criminal conviction).
Anyway, this is missing the point - after all, it's not as if there aren't superior alternatives to drugs. In the mental health arena, at any rate.
Matt
Neuro:
Just curious. Do you take money from drug or medical device companies?
Laws have unintended consequences. I've become much less prone to think passing a law is a solution. Systemically the drug companies are corrupt and the government is already complicit in that - i.e. the FDA.
This isn't the answer.
Anonymous: Yes, they pay me to call for tighter legislative regulation (and to blog about how their stuff doesn't work).
I'm not sure why they pay me for that but hey, I'm not complaining.
Radagast: "Suppressing" trial results is only illegal in some juristictions... and until recently it wasn't illegal at all. My point is that unless there's a law in place to force companys to release results, you can't blame them for not wanting the negative ones to go public - they exist to make a profit. Which is why we need laws to regulate them. I'm saying we need more laws, and that if you're angry about a drug company doing something you should in fact be angry at the laws that allow it (unless it is, in fact, illegal...in which case, yes, the regulators need to get their ass i gear.) Getting angry at drug companies achieves nothing, working for legislative change just might.
NS wrote:
""Suppressing" trial results is only illegal in some juristictions..."
Oh, I agree - withholding publication of unfavourable results is regarded as completely legitimate, because any given company has complete control over the IPR that is contained within those results, although it is my understanding that all trials results and evidence of SAEs must be submitted to regulators, in the EU. What I was suggesting was that this "legimate" withholding of information permits a fraud: the company knows that the drug is shit, and hides the fact in order to make a profit. That's fraud, and one may not contract out of criminality by arguing that one may hide the evidence of one's fraud by exercizing a legal right. If that were acceptable, then there would be no point in enacting *any* criminal statutes, because we could all just contract out of them.
If the authorities are willing to overlook this glaring inconsistency, then no amount of new legislation is going to have any effect. Indeed, with regard off-label marketing, Eli recently got off by pleading guilty to a misdemeanour, in addition to the civil action (rather than prosecution), that AZ recently cut a deal on viz a viz Seroquel.
I'll say it again: there is no appetite to pursue these companies, even when the outcome of their activities suggests serious mala fides. And one may only guess at the reason behind that lack of appetite.
Matt
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