Interesting read, but one extreme statement sticks out that makes me question the veracity of the whole article:
“A family reported that a hospital threatened to remove life support from their gravely ill daughter after a charity’s transfer of thousands of dollars failed to materialize”
Really? This was supposed to happen in the UK? I can imagine it as an extreme case in the US, where money rules. Zittrain needs to provide evidence that this happened, otherwise the whole article has devalued itself.
Also, his understanding of how pharmaceutical research works is basically flawed. It is not a “trial-and-error” process. Certainly, the original identification of potentially useful substances may, in some areas like antibiotics, be based on something like this in first-steps, but it is certainly not as random as he implies.
Furthermore, he mistakes pharmaceutical package inserts as clinical documents, when, in reality, they are legal documents.
This is what happens when people with some level of expertise in one area believes it gives them expertise on all areas.
