Hacker News Reader

Comment by jostmey | Hacker News Reader

I haven't been able to do my job with respect to this project. There's a distinction between hard and impossible

Fair point. If you were in the UK I would say that means you're trying to do a job that requires you to break the law and it's been decided that it's in the best interests of society that you don't do that job.

Obviously as you said you're in the US and it sounds like your situation is very different (you haven't identified a law stopping your work just an ethics board that won't sign off for a reason you don't know).

But there are laws about protecting patient information such as the HIPAA laws, which make it much harder to do research and to start a business that processes patient information. These laws become a major consideration for any committee that is deciding whether or not to approve access to data/samples

> it's been decided that it's in the best interests of society that you don't do that job.

Remember that what has been decided, and what is actually the case, are not always the same. That's why people advocate for changing the law. OP thinks the law is too restrictive; saying "well that's what the law is" is not much of a reply.

Completely agree, I didn't mean to imply 'because it's law it's what people want' but I don't see any movement in the UK that any significant number of people would want there health data being shared with corporations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com