PointofLaw.com on how the liability system costs lives – in this case, talking about a drug for HIV prophylaxis:

“In part because the prospect of harming a healthy person raises formidable liability issues for Gilead Sciences, tenofovir’s manufacturer, the company says it has no interest in marketing the drug as a prophylaxis, even if trials prove that it works.”

Peter Huber in Liability long ago argued that our liability system can cost more lives than it saves. As The New York Times Magazine article notes, the human cost imposed by our liability system can be profound indeed: “Optimistic mathematical models [that do not account for behavioral changes stemming from the presence of a prophylaxis] show that if tenofovir PrEP is effective 90 percent of the time and is used by 90 percent of the people who are at highest risk of becoming infected, it could cut new H.I.V. infections in a community by more than 80 percent in a few years.”

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