You know, medical research would be so much faster and easier and cheaper if we could just test new drugs and devices and procedures on humans. We don’t. We shouldn’t. Half of all humans who have ever lived, died from mosquito-borne illnes, about 5,000,000,000 human lives. People who argue that the relatively paltry number of people killed by automobiles justifies a little “sacrifice” to prevent it in the future, never seem to apply that callousness to other arenas. Certainly those people are not lining up to volunteer as test subjects.

We don’t get to make that choice for others. If you want to try give yourself Yellow Fever(1) to help prevent its spread, you go for it. If you want to infect other people for the same reason (1), go to hell. The same applies to cars. If you’re volunteering to push a bike on a dark test track for Uber, you go be you. If you want to make the state of Arizona’s citizens unconsenting guinea pigs for the same reason, go to hell.

This isn’t a new concept, it’s just a new tech, the moral dimension hasn’t changed. The fact that ethical R&D is harder than unethical R&D isn’t news, and isn’t an excuse.

(1) https://highschoolbioethics.georgetown.edu/units/cases/unit3...