I'm a pre-med. I regularly see physicians in the emergency room who over medicate and over test patients to protect themselves from litigation.

Consider researching about the benefits of an environment where physicians can discuss mistakes they've made without fear of litigation. Perhaps it could result in better medicine and better patient-physician trust.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUbfRzxNy20 for more thoughts on this topic.

Someone mod parent up.

Slashdotters are quick to complain that our liberties that are becoming fewer and fewer, but we don't hesitate to push legislation when the activity in question bothers us.

I would attest that there are far more dangerous activities one could commit that are freedoms we wouldn't consider revoking. People are negligent and make poor choices, but removing freedoms that some abuse from the entire population is a knee jerk over correction that gives far too much power to authorities.

...before removing a freedom from the American people. I recognize that texting while driving can be very dangerous, but it is so important to question our urge to legislate things when it may not be necessary.

If we are concerned that texting is dangerous and should be banned, shouldn't we make it illegal to eat while driving? Should we ban drive-thru food? What about making it illegal for children in the backseat to distract the driver? Where do you stop? Statistically speaking, I'm convinced that there are far more dangerous activities than texting while driving - where do we stop legislating freedoms to insulate Americans from harming themselves out of negligence?

Removing a liberty from the American public should not be done without very serious consideration of the matter. There are very few degrees of separation between a nation that is concerned about the safety of their people to a police state.

As a pre-med, I find this immensely interesting. However, the problem with this argument (as the OP implies) is that it's a law firm. Of course they're going to tell us that robots are botching surgeries; they're God-damned medical malpractice attorneys. They'll say that any procedure or medicine, no matter how well-researched, is botched.

I spent time volunteering in the operating room at Banner Gateway Medical Center in Gilbert, AZ and had the opportunity to sit and watch numerous robotic surgeries. Contrary to popular belief, you don't press a few buttons and let a humanoid robot walk over to the pt and start cutting them up to do a hysterectomy. The physician directly controls the highly precise robotic arms and looks directly into a laproscopic camera in a terminal in the operating room. Robots don't botch surgeries, surgeons do. Oh, and doctors don't jack up the cost of medicine, medical malpractice attorneys do.

Everyone I speak with who actually sees the results of surgeries (techs, nurses, surgeon's, patients) told me that the robotic surgeries were absolutely the way to go. They reduce recovery time by making far more precise and far smaller incisions and they give the surgeon the opportunity to be sitting during surgeries that can exceed 4 hours - that's a big deal. If I had a laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery was an option, I'd be all over it.

Google Scholar search will give you dozens of articles to peruse about how well researched this field is. And of course, the people who make the surgical robot Da Vinci Surgery, have plenty of sources they cite: http://www.davincisurgery.com/da-vinci-surgery/clinical-evidence/robotic-surgery-references.php.

If you have a question about medicine, ask a doctor, not a lawyer. No, I don't work for Da Vinci, but I do work for doctors and I see the ridiculous hoops they have to jump through to avoid shitty litigation like this.