I wrote
last month about my diabetes diagnosis this year and my
difficult choice to wear a proprietary device (called a
CGM) on my arm 24/7
to continuously monitor my glucose levels. Like my friend and colleague,
Karen M. Sandler — who previously made a much higher-stakes choice to
receive a proprietary implanted defibrillator to keep her safe given her
genetic heart condition — I reluctantly chose to attach proprietary
hardware and software to my body.
Nah, the pharmaceutical companies have covered themselves via reams of fine print. Using any of the GCMs (or pumps for that matter) means signing away all your legal protections and even if it didn’t the companies have billion dollar lawyers that can easily crush any case brought against them. Unless you’re a multimillionaire you literally can’t afford to sue any of them.
That’s the real flaw with the current US legal system (the civil one at least), individuals can’t afford to bring cases against large corporations. Class action cases can make it possible, but even then the odds are in the favor of the corporations and even if you win nobody actually makes anything off of those besides the lawyers. Typically the lawyers take 50% of the judgement off the top and by the time you divvy up the remaining 50% among all the participants it’s at most a few hundred bucks each if even that.
Does that include protection from false advertising, eh?