It also depends heavily on whether you believe people who work in construction (i.e. blue collar workers) are an currency expendable on behalf of people who have cushy low risk jobs.

I’d be inclined to agree with you if we all had the same chance of risking our lives for the greater good and we could mutually agree on what the odds should be, but I feel like that’s why we’be come to the conclusion that it’s probably best if people didn’t die on a construction site for the same of innovation. (Also, I’d bet negligence is probably a more proper cause.)

Clinical trials for cancer are less fraught with the ethical problems of the construction worker since presumably the patient is that desperate for a cure, but we have general standards for these things like IRBs, protocols, and physicians trained to “do no harm” just to make sure the final product is safe and won’t guarantee a sooner death.

Also, while we may be at a disadvantage since we can’t just throw money at the problem, we’re still making remarkable progress: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/availability