Maybe in the consumer space. But they’re still a huge conglomerate, and one of the biggest MedTech companies in the world. I’m not questioning their malfeasance here, but I doubt it’s going to impact sales on their MRI, CT, EKG… devices very much.
However the brand as a whole is not enjoying its day in the sun, and I hope more people do not get hurt or worse.
Yeah, heavy regulation is that reason. Somehow, heavy regulation that doesn't kick-in when they do something wrong, but only kicks-in when a smaller company wants to make a first product.
But well, it's an area that needs regulation. It's just the format that isn't looking good.
I have no idea how to solve it, but demanding big capital is exactly what led us to the situation that the corporations are too big to punish, and can kill as many people as they wish, making the regulation completely moot.
The regulation will always take some capital, and slow innovation by some amount. But the current mindset is completely counterproductive.
People tend to mostly agree that certain industries should be highly regulated, with medicine being one of the least controversial examples of that. Highly regulated will always mean a big regulatory moat. If it takes years or even decades to get a product to market, and if developing, testing and getting approval for that product requires spending a lot of money, then you need big capital somewhere along the way to make it happen.
There’s not really any decent counter argument to this, it’s basically a truism that if something is very expensive to do, then you need a lot of money to do it. To say that’s counter productive seems like your own value judgement, because what do you think they should be trying to produce? The goal of the regulations is safety and rigour, and perhaps those regulations have some flaws, but there’s no solution to that problem that doesn’t involve high costs for compliance.