i personally disagree with the idea that you can have 'freedom of speech' combined with the threat of lawsuits for said speech. if that were the case, china isn't that different. while i don't think that one should be allowed to yell at people, for example, communication between consenting parties should be allowed regardless of its content.

in china, for example, you have (some) freedom to go onto a website and talk about tiananmen square. however, i hope you're ready to take "responsibility" four your speech.

i'm exaggerating of course, but that's not too different from having to take "responsibility" for a comment. a difference, you could say, is whether the speaker is on the side of truth or not, but in china, the tiananmen square massacre is generally not known to have happened.

anyway, the legal proceedings surrounding a lawsuit (or pretty much anything involving a courtroom) are quite a punishment. even if the accusation is thrown out, there is nontrivial inconvenience caused.

because of the difficulty of ascertaining what is 'true' in many cases (not to mention that i hope people will eventually learn to take things with grains of salt), i think that 'freedom of speech' should include 'freedom to lie'. it might seem convenient to live in a world where people never lie, that just isn't possible -- and our current implementation means that one's ability to speak depends on anonymity... or money to spend on lawyers.

y'know what's really ridiculous about the ending?

(spoiler)

so, the danger is radiation, and you are given the choice between two humans to send in. why can't we send in my super mutant buddy? he is immune to radiation... and there's a ghoul you can get as a bodyguard too.

(end spoiler)

Not that I support big drug companies or anything, but how are you coming up with that? Logic dictates that governments would be less efficient in producing drugs (like they seem to be with everything else). Further, you are then forced to rely on the current government in power to decide on what avenues (drug development wise) to pursue. If that was the case, you would never get things like the "morning after pill" or anything else that has any controversy behind it.

Really? Well, the market seems to think that we need these drugs, doesn't it?

Huh? What are you suggesting? That pharmaceutical companies provide no drugs of non-trivial value to society? Interesting. What about the HIV cocktails like Isentress , Zidovudine ? I could go on and list a 100 more, but I think I have shown my point.