Anne Wojcicki Quotes
I think there's a point to regulating, because there are snake oil companies.
Regulation had been adopted to make sure that certain products were made to standards and appropriate quality. A small fee was taken by the regulator to attest to the quality and place a seal on it. However, the system degenerated into a system where one had to pay the fee and everything passed inspection without regard for quality. Child was one of the first observers of the criticality of implementation of regulatory schemes and the danger that a regulatory system was vulnerable to corruption.
1st Baron Macaulay. This issue is still debated in America. Until the latter part of the 20th century, businesses could sell supposed medicines without any proof of efficacy or safety. The Government or others had to prove that there was something wrong with the product. Then, that shifted, and the burden of proof fell on the developer and seller of medicines as Macaulay favored, but sellers of vitamins and dietary supplements were exempted and operated under the previous American (anti Macaulay) position. Ironically, political opponents of requiring the drug company to prove safety and efficacy claimed that this was a radical new, untested idea that would inhibit development of medicinals. They did not realize that 150 years earlier, this was a standard, accepted point of view in England. Even into the 21st century, America operated with the inconsistent difference between vitamins and supplements, many of which have no beneficial effect whatsoever, and medicines.
She was then the European Commissioner for Competition.
This is one of the earliest examples of regulation for consumer protection. Later, the Magna Carta would incorporate the concept of standard weights and measures.
At the time of this interview there had been a decade of business fraud at many different levels. The regulatory agencies supposedly responsible for the regulation had neither the staff or the political will to even enforce the laws and regulations then in existence and there were many loopholes in those. Many business interests opposed all regulation and strict enforcement as a diminution of the health of the economy. Others, like Greenspan, saw fraud as corrupting the markets themselves and therefore the usual capitalistic economic competitive forces that would control business do not operate with extensive fraud.
Even today, the ethics of the business world are much looser than ethics of most other areas. He was considered one of the 7 Great Greek Sages, although he was not Greek by birth.
Anne E. Wojcicki is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and serves as CEO of the personal genomics company 23andMe.
