It's easier for the law to protect investors and much harder to protect the public…

Trust thought for the day - another pop at trust and governance and Theranos, I was a bit shocked about how difficult it is to get accountability for the public good. Though of course, this is the US, here in Wired:

"The case against the Theranos founder is a troubling reminder: It's easier for the law to protect investors and much harder to protect the public".

This article and a leader by Steven Levy in the Wired Newsletter reminds us that:

"There are real issues behind what went wrong with Theranos, but we didn’t need a glamorous trial to figure them out. In short, we’ve got an out-of-whack financial system based on ludicrous rewards and a broken health system where patient needs are secondary to profit-taking. The vast majority of the actors in those systems don’t break laws or commit fraud. Nonetheless, these systems are messed up. Beyond the defendant’s hairstyle, and the charges of domestic abuse, the Holmes case rubs our faces in that mess."

"Even more troubling is that such fortunes can be made in proprietary health care advances. Big Pharma keeps jacking up the price of medicine, because it can. Meanwhile, some surgeons who discover a cool new technique in the operating room are rushing to the patent office instead of sharing the life-saving innovation, ethics be damned".

"We’re a long way from Jonas Salk, who responded to a question about why he didn’t patent his polio vaccine by saying, “Can you patent the sun?”

End of an era? Hah. In US vs. Elizabeth Holmes, we had a newsworthy defendant on the docket. But the system itself was not on trial. And that’s too bad'.