Medical Ethics in Technology
Medical Ethics in Technology refers to the application of biomedical ethics principles — autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice — to the design and deployment of technological systems. OMXUS is the first civic infrastructure explicitly built on these principles, treating technology design as a practice with the same ethical obligations as medicine.
The Four Principles
The dominant framework in biomedical ethics was articulated by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in their 1979 work Principles of Biomedical Ethics:
1. Autonomy
Respect for the individual's right to self-determination. In medicine, this manifests as informed consent. In technology:
- Users must understand what a system does with their data
- Participation must be voluntary
- Users must be able to withdraw without penalty
- OMXUS implementation: Ring-based consent for every interaction; no passive data collection
2. Non-Maleficence
"First, do no harm" (primum non nocere). The obligation to avoid causing damage. In technology:
- Systems must not harm users as a side effect of their operation
- Potential harms must be identified and mitigated before deployment
- Profit cannot justify harm
- OMXUS implementation: Non-Maleficence is an explicit design constraint; the system cannot be used to restrict individual freedom
3. Beneficence
The obligation to act in the patient's best interest. In technology:
- Systems should actively benefit their users, not merely avoid harm
- Design decisions should prioritize user welfare over engagement metrics or revenue
- OMXUS implementation: The system exists to serve its members; revenue comes from external API access, not user exploitation
4. Justice
Fair distribution of benefits and burdens. In technology:
- Access should not depend on wealth, location, or social status
- Algorithmic decisions should not discriminate
- Benefits of technology should be shared broadly
- OMXUS implementation: One person, one ring, one identity; proximity weighting distributes influence by relevance, not wealth
The Hippocratic Oath for Technologists
Several initiatives have proposed extending the Hippocratic oath to technology practitioners:
- The Hippocratic License (2019) — An open-source license prohibiting use that violates the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- The Copenhagen Letter (2017) — A declaration by technology professionals committing to human-centered design
- The Technologist's Oath (various) — Multiple proposals modeled on the medical oath
These efforts share a recognition that technology, like medicine, operates on a power asymmetry: practitioners have capabilities that users do not understand, creating an ethical obligation analogous to the doctor-patient relationship.
"Move Fast and Break Things"
The dominant ethos of Silicon Valley, captured by Facebook's original motto, represents the antithesis of medical ethics:
| Medical Ethics | "Move Fast and Break Things" |
|---|---|
| Identify risks before deployment | Deploy first, fix problems later |
| Informed consent | Consent buried in Terms of Service |
| Do no harm | Acceptable collateral damage |
| Act in patient's interest | Act in shareholder's interest |
| Justice and equity | Winner-take-all dynamics |
| Accountability for outcomes | "We're just a platform" |
The consequences of this ethos are well-documented: social media's effects on adolescent mental health, algorithmic amplification of extremism, mass surveillance infrastructure, addiction-optimized engagement, and the erosion of democratic discourse.
Why Technology Needs Medical Ethics
Power Asymmetry
Like doctors, technologists hold power over people who cannot fully understand or evaluate the systems they depend on. A user cannot audit the algorithm that determines their news feed any more than a patient can evaluate their own MRI.
Scale of Impact
A single technology decision can affect billions of people simultaneously. No medical intervention has ever operated at such scale, yet technology operates with far less ethical oversight.
Irreversibility
Some technological harms — privacy violations, social manipulation, infrastructure dependency — cannot be undone after the fact. Prevention, not remedy, must be the standard.
OMXUS as Implementation
OMXUS is not merely inspired by medical ethics; it is architecturally constrained by them:
- The system cannot collect data without active consent (autonomy)
- The system cannot be used to restrict individual freedom (non-maleficence)
- The system must serve its members' interests (beneficence)
- The system must distribute access and influence fairly (justice)
These are not policy choices that can be reversed by a future board of directors. They are structural properties of the protocol itself.
See Also
References
- Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of Biomedical Ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.
- Floridi, L., & Taddeo, M. (2016). "What is data ethics?" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 374(2083).
- Harris, T. (2016). "How Technology Hijacks People's Minds." Thrive Global.
- Vaidhyanathan, S. (2018). Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford University Press.
- Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs.