Actual medical conspiracies, such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, probably contribute to public credence in medical conspiracy theories, such as anti-vax or HIV-AIDS denialism, which have a directly detrimental effect on public health.
In a culture of ideal rationalists, you might be better off having a government run lottery where people were randomly selected for participation in medical experiments, with participation on selection being mandatory for any experiment, whatever its effects on the participants, and all experiments being vetted only if their expected returns were more valuable than any negative effect (including loss of time) imposed on the participants. But we’re a species which is instinctively more afraid of sharks than stairs, so for human beings this probably isn’t a good recipe for social harmony.
Actual medical conspiracies, such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, probably contribute to public credence in medical conspiracy theories, such as anti-vax or HIV-AIDS denialism, which have a directly detrimental effect on public health.
Probably.
In a culture of ideal rationalists, you might be better off having a government run lottery where people were randomly selected for participation in medical experiments, with participation on selection being mandatory for any experiment, whatever its effects on the participants, and all experiments being vetted only if their expected returns were more valuable than any negative effect (including loss of time) imposed on the participants. But we’re a species which is instinctively more afraid of sharks than stairs, so for human beings this probably isn’t a good recipe for social harmony.