Tory officials are working with drug companies on plans to corrupt Britain's National Health Service in the name of facilitating drug trials.

The basic idea of having data managers allow research queries while protecting patients' queries is worth thinking about. But I would not trust plutocratist politicians to restrain companies from abusing such a scheme. The companies would game the rules to try to deduce data about individual patients and sell it, and if the data managers simply follow rules, the snoopers will run rings around them.

The main moral issue in this is that the government should not give this cooperation without charging them a price. The price must be a reduction in monopoly power (patents, secrets, and restrictions on self-replicating substances).