Eliezer, I don't think the approach I'm suggesting needs to be done through government. For example, it could be done extragovernmentally, and then it would require an excercise a government power to prevent extragovernmental agents from carrying it out.
TGGP, it sounds like you're saying that if certain social arrangements become too yucky to optimize yor personal odds of persistence (and I understand maximizing general odds is different than maximizing personal odds) then you'd rather die (or at least take an increased odds of death)? I can't say I relate to that point of view, at all.
Nathan, I think the reason we don't have compulsory medical trials is probably explained more by "functional not optimal" than the possibility that it doesn't pass cost-benefit. Here I'm specifically making randomized compulsory medical trials contingent on the degree that they pass cost-benefit. It seems to me to be such a naturally beneficial idea (at least on some levels) that I'm curious if utilitarians like Singer have at least done the analysis.
By request of the community, an Open Thread for free-form comments, so long as they're still related to the basic project of this blog.
A word on post requests: You're free to ask, but the authors can't commit to posting on requested topics - it's hard enough to do the ones we have in mind already.