IBM’s Watson computer may soon decide if some individuals receive healthcare or not.
IBM, whose stock price has sunk to its lowest in four years, has recently “announced a $1 billion investment to establish the new Watson Group.” IBM’s Watson computer processes large amounts of your information to make a better decision for you. Watson is now embedded in the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Data Center in Austin, Texas to “advise doctors on treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
According to their press release, the technology will “transform decision making.” Or said in a different way, if you are a Veteran in need of care, IBM’s Watson will soon make the decision about your health care for you.
Big Data Used Against You
IBM’s Watson can “understand and respond to Big Data.” This is a catch-all phrase that encompasses medical literature, clinical data, personal electronic records, and doctor’s personal comments on patients. For years, it has been an open secret that all of our “Big Data” has been harvested and stored without our consent. This includes every Facebook thought, phone conversation, every purchase, and even household conversations, to name a few. There is no doubt that this “Big Data” is waiting to be used towards withholding or forcing medical treatment at the stroke of a bureaucratic pen in the future.
The role being given to IBM’s Watson represents the official shift to disempower the practicing medical community and accelerate the mandates of Obamacare in your individual life. You could say IBM’s Watson is “common core re-education for the mind of the medical community.” All personal medical records will be uploaded and “delivered from the cloud” according to IBM’s press release. Presumably, the same cloud computing software that was recently hacked resulting in the public release of nude celebrity photos taken from their trusted wireless devices and computers linked to the cloud.
Corrupt Data
Recently, Charles Seife made major headlines when he published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that research misconduct is often unreported in published medical studies. These are the same medical studies that the IBM’s Watson will reference to issue orders on what treatment a patient gets.
In addition, the current clinical data and medical literature being used by Watson has produced a disastrous 1 in 22 veteran suicides per day, a fast approaching 1 in 2 people with cancer, and 1 in 68 children with autism in the United States.
It is the insight, humanity, courage, and empathy to look for solutions outside this broken system that will lead to better ways. While using data, old and new, from a Veteran’s Affairs system that has a treacherous public record for poor quality care, limited use for cures, and a “profits-over-people” view shows further recklessness at best and perhaps a deeper agenda at play.
Fool Me Once
From the get go, IBM’s Watson is a slap in the face to anyone paying attention. IBM cemented its corporate influence by making Hollerith, their big data punch card sorting machines for Germany during World War II in order to better locate Jewish residents when Hitler came to power. In the words of Edwin Black, author of “IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation:”
“IBM Germany, using its own staff and equipment, designed, executed, and supplied the indispensable technologic assistance Hitler’s Third Reich needed to accomplish what had never been done before—the automation of human destruction.”
Black continues later in his historic analysis to state that IBM New York always understood from the outset in 1933 that they were courting and doing business with the Nazi party. The company leveraged its Nazi party connections to continuously enhance its business relationship with the Third Reich, Germany, and Nazi-dominated Europe. In addition, IBM and its German subsidiary Dehomag (IBM Europe) serviced the machines, including ones located in concentration camps, regularly throughout the war.
Thomas A Watson, IBM’s founder, greatly admired his Nazi partners as evidence from correspondence, visits to Germany during the war, and regular gifts to Reich command. On September 11th, 1934 Watson sent the following telegram to his IBM Berlin subsidiary:
“Confirming agreement reached between us in Berlin October 1933 we extend by that agreement your company’s rights to manufacture and to sell our machines to all European Hollerith companies.”
Additional Sources:
IBM’s Watson Announcement
IBM & The Holocaust
Medical Research Misconduct (JAMA)