Oh man, a philosophical/ethical rabbit hole! Down we go...
> I mean, it is not ethical to willfully expose human to known dangerous drugs, yet if they take it wilfully by themselves or by mistake, it's a great source of data: for example, pharmacovigilence collects accidental use of drugs by pregnant mothers to guesstimate the toxicity on the fetus or the LD50 on humans)
The issue at hand isn't the subject's consent, I assume - the issue is our act of encouraging an individual to do something that might be harmful. Otherwise, there would be nothing wrong with performing studies on heroin use, as long as the appropriate warning labels were affixed. (I'm just assuming you're not a hard-core libertarian. If you are: just have a private company enforce the ban, and all will be well ;P )
I think, though, that it's also unethical to allow /others/ to knowingly encourage an individual to do something harmful. I recognize this is pretty controversial (if I were religious, I'd be a pain in the ass), but it means that if we are reasonably certain that item X is harmful, banning or restricting advertising is a must.
I also think it's ethically preferred to, where feasible act to discourage others (without coercion) from doing things harmful to themselves. Government- and charity-run nutrition programs, PSAs, etc.
That's our ethical dilemma, I guess, or at least mine. On the one hand, long-term scientific knowledge may be more rich and valuable if nothing is done. On the other, there is a moral imperative to take actions which might limit that long-term knowledge.
I'm inclined to assert, boldly and without factual basis, that there will be "enough" people who disregard the advertisements and PSAs, that scientists won't be much bothered by the missing data. Remember it's not like LSD; we're not banning the substance, just the encouragement. People smoke plenty of cigs, even though they're not advertised (and there's abundant negative advertising).
(By the way, I'm also very against coffee, having bad personal experiences with an individual who's behavior was/is noticeably negatively affected by the stuff. I'd support normalizing drug laws by lumping hyper-junk foods, caffeine, alcohol, cigs, pot, and other mildly harmful items of varying addictiveness into one big "restricted advertising" category, and using the taxes to send out occasional PSAs.)
> I mean, it is not ethical to willfully expose human to known dangerous drugs, yet if they take it wilfully by themselves or by mistake, it's a great source of data: for example, pharmacovigilence collects accidental use of drugs by pregnant mothers to guesstimate the toxicity on the fetus or the LD50 on humans)
The issue at hand isn't the subject's consent, I assume - the issue is our act of encouraging an individual to do something that might be harmful. Otherwise, there would be nothing wrong with performing studies on heroin use, as long as the appropriate warning labels were affixed. (I'm just assuming you're not a hard-core libertarian. If you are: just have a private company enforce the ban, and all will be well ;P )
I think, though, that it's also unethical to allow /others/ to knowingly encourage an individual to do something harmful. I recognize this is pretty controversial (if I were religious, I'd be a pain in the ass), but it means that if we are reasonably certain that item X is harmful, banning or restricting advertising is a must.
I also think it's ethically preferred to, where feasible act to discourage others (without coercion) from doing things harmful to themselves. Government- and charity-run nutrition programs, PSAs, etc.
That's our ethical dilemma, I guess, or at least mine. On the one hand, long-term scientific knowledge may be more rich and valuable if nothing is done. On the other, there is a moral imperative to take actions which might limit that long-term knowledge.
I'm inclined to assert, boldly and without factual basis, that there will be "enough" people who disregard the advertisements and PSAs, that scientists won't be much bothered by the missing data. Remember it's not like LSD; we're not banning the substance, just the encouragement. People smoke plenty of cigs, even though they're not advertised (and there's abundant negative advertising).
(By the way, I'm also very against coffee, having bad personal experiences with an individual who's behavior was/is noticeably negatively affected by the stuff. I'd support normalizing drug laws by lumping hyper-junk foods, caffeine, alcohol, cigs, pot, and other mildly harmful items of varying addictiveness into one big "restricted advertising" category, and using the taxes to send out occasional PSAs.)