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Assessing risk
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Epidemiological Studies : We are constantly exposed to different risks that have become inherent in our socio-technical circumstances. These ongoing, unintentional experiments are exploited through epidemiological studies which are designed to measure the correlation between exposure to risk factors and the occurrence of harm. For example, are those living close to EMFs (electro-magnetic fields generated by technologies like electrical power lines) susceptible to certain harms like leukemia? An epidemiological study would compare incidents of this disease occurring in a population exposed to EMFs with incidents of this disease occurring in a population, unexposed to EMSs. If there were a significant risk ratio (usually set at three times the incidents of the harm in the unexposed, control group) then this provides evidence that exposure to EMFs somehow causes leukemia. (Further study would be required to confirm this hypothesis and uncover the causal mechanism by which exposure produces the harm.) Epidemiological studies are difficult to carry out and are always accompanied by uncertainty due to the limitations of the methods employed. Typically, the harm may take years to become manifest after exposure. Finding a population stable enough to determine the effects of long term exposure is difficult because individuals frequently move from place to place. Such natural experiments also bring with them a great deal of "noise"; factors other than EMFs could be causing leukemia or EMFs could be interacting with other elements in the environment to cause the harm. Finally, there is the Tuskegee factor. In the notorious Tuskegee experiment, doctors refused to treat African Americans for syphilis in order to study the long term progression of the disease. Exposing a population to a risk factor without informing them of the potential harm in order to gain scientific information violates the right of free and informed consent and the duty not to harm.
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Animal Bioassays : Risk information can often be obtained by exposing animals to the risk factor and checking for emerging harms. While useful, animal bioassays are subject to several problems. Experimenting on animals raises many of the same ethical concerns as experimenting on humans. Utilitarians argue that animals merit moral consideration because they are sentient and can suffer. Animal experiments are thus subject to the three Rs: reduce, refine, and avoid replication. (See Bernard Rollins) Second, these experiments create two kinds of uncertainty. (a) Projections from animal to human physiology can lead researchers astray because of the differences between the two; for example, animals are more sensitive to certain harms than humans. (b) Projecting the results from intensive short term animal exposure into the long term can also introduce errors and uncertainty. Thus, as with epidemiological studies, there are uncertainties inherent in animal bioassays.
- Risk assessment, while useful, is burdened with uncertainty due to the limits of what we know, what we can know, and what we are able to learn within the ethical parameters of human and animal experimentation. Crucial ethical issues arise as we decide how to distribute this uncertainty. Do we place its burden on the risk taker by continuing with a project until it is proven unsafe and harmful? Or do we suspend the activity until it is proven safe and harm-free. The first gives priority to advancing risky activities. The second gives priority to public safety and health, even to the point of suspending the new activities under question.
Source:
OpenStax, Business ethics. OpenStax CNX. Sep 04, 2013 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10491/1.11
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