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Maintaining Incentives For Bioprospecting: The Occasional Need For A Right To Lie, Robert H. Heidt

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Building on a model by Anthony Kronman, the author argues that biotechnological researchers searching for valuable cells should occasionally be allowed to deceive research subjects whose cells prove valuable. The wish to preserve proper incentives for these searches justifies this exception to the law's usual abhorrence of deception. The subject's ability to "hold up" the researcher once the subject learns of his cells' value combined with the law's likely refusal to force an unwilling subject to continue his cooperation with the researcher poses risks for biotechnologists that other producers of information do not face and that the right to deceive …