American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG) recently provided two recommendations about predictive genetic testing of children. The Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium's Pediatrics Working Group compared these recommendations, focusing on operational and ethical issues specific to decision making for children. Content analysis of the statements addresses two issues: (1) how these recommendations characterize and analyze locus of decision making, as well as the risks and benefits of testing, and (2) whether the guidelines conflict (...) or come to different but compatible conclusions because they consider different testing scenarios. These statements differ in ethically significant ways. AAP/ACMG analyzes risks and benefits using best interests of the child and recommends that, absent ameliorative interventions available during childhood, clinicians should generally decline to order testing. Parents authorize focused tests. ACMG analyzes risks and benefits using the interests of the child and other family members and recommends that sequencing results be examined for additional variants that can lead to ameliorative interventions, regardless of age, which laboratories should report to clinicians who should contextualize the results. Parents must accept additional analysis. The ethical arguments in these statements appear to be in tension with each other. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for (...) the stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The aim of the research is to investigate the effect of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy on post-traumatic stress disorder levels of individuals who can be defined as high-risk groups during the pandemic. Therefore, the online EMDR R-TEP Protocol was applied to a total of 154 individuals working with coronavirus patients, frontline professionals, relatives of coronavirus patients, coronavirus patients, and relatives of someone who died from coronavirus and the PTSD symptom level before, after, and 1 month after therapy (...) was measured and examined. A personal information form and impact of events scale were used to collect data. Analyses showed that EMDR therapy was effective in reducing the PTSD level in all groups. The PTSD levels of frontline professionals continued to decrease until the follow-up test but remained the same in the other groups. (shrink)

Este texto apresenta resultados de pesquisa sobre grupos de risco, educação de jovens e adultos (EJA) e identidades juvenis. Objetiva produzir uma narrativa sobre a possível relação entre a inclusão precária, a violência e a pressão do cotidiano com a participação de jovens da EJA em grupos juvenis denominados bondes. O substrato empírico compõe-se de registros etnográficos do cotidiano juvenil em ambiente escolar e, de modo especial, considera as narrativas de quatro jovens matriculados na modalidade EJA de uma escola da (...) rede pública municipal de Caxias do Sul. Através da voz dos jovens da EJA e participantes dos bondes, procura compreender as interfaces desta modalidade de ensino com as culturas juvenis. Descreve percursos, sonhos e frustrações presentes nas narrativas dos entrevistados, oportunizadas por meio de entrevistas em profundidade. Os referenciais teóricos para as reflexões construídas buscam sustentação em: Miriam Abramovay, Glória Diógenes, Nilda Stecanela, Alberto Melucci, Juarez Dayrel, entre outros. (shrink)

Critical race theorists and standpoint epistemologists argue that agents who are members of dominant social groups are often in a state of ignorance about the extent of their social dominance, where this ignorance is explained by these agents' membership in a socially dominant group (e.g., Mills 2007). To illustrate this claim bluntly, it is argued: 1) that many white men do not know the extent of their social dominance, 2) that they remain ignorant as to the extent of their (...) dominant social position even where this information is freely attainable, and 3) that this ignorance is due in part to the fact that they are white men. We argue that on Buchak's (2010, 2013) model of risk averse instrumental rationality, ignorance of one's privileges can be rational. This argument yields a new account of elite-group ignorance, why it may occur, and how it might be alleviated. (shrink)

There has been a movement aiming to teach agents about their privilege by making the information about their privilege as costless as possible. However, some argue that in risk-sensitive frameworks, such as Lara Buchak’s (2013), it can be rational for privileged agents to shield themselves from learning about their privilege, even if the information is costless and relevant. This threatens the efficacy of these information-access efforts in alleviating the problem of elite-group ignorance. In response, I show that even (...) within the same framework, in this case David Kinney and Liam Kofi Bright’s (2021), the rationality of this information avoidance rests on shaky ground in practice. In this framework, whether an agent should avoid information depends on the precise details of (1) how relevant they expect the information to be, (2) their priors about the value of various options, and (3) their risk attitudes. The model suggests that the rationality of elite-group ignorance is a function of structural factors that are pervasive but nonetheless not insurmountable, thus offering a way out of pessimism about elite group education. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge has not stabilized in the current, early, phase of research and development of nanotechnologies creating a challenge to ‘upstream’ public engagement. Nevertheless, the idea that the public should be involved in deliberative discussions and assessments of emerging technologies at this early stage is widely shared among governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Many forums for public debate including focus groups, and citizen juries, have thus been organized to explore public opinions on nanotechnologies in a variety of countries over the past (...) few years. In Switzerland the Centre for Technology Assessment (TA-Swiss) organized such a citizen panel in fall 2006. Drawing from an ethnographic study of this panel called ‘publifocus on nanotechnologies, health, and environment’ this paper looks at the ways members of a stakeholder group deal with the epistemic uncertainty in their deliberation of nanotechnologies. By exploring the statements of the participants in the stakeholder discussion group, this paper reconstructs the narratives that constitute the epistemic foundations of the participants’ evaluations of nanotechnologies. (shrink)

: This essay distinguishes between two kinds of group harms: harms to individuals in virtue of their membership in groups and harms to "structured" groups that have a continuing existence, an organization, and interests of their own. Genetic research creates risks of causing both kinds of group harms, and engagement with the groups at risk can help to mitigate those harms. The two kinds of group harms call for different kinds of group engagement.

Interventions to decrease acquisition and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases among African American women using text messages versus small-group delivery modalities pose distinct research risks and benefits. Determining the relative risk–benefit ratio of studies using these different modalities has relied on the expertise of investigators and their institutional review boards. In this study, African American women participated in focus groups and surveys to elicit and compare risks and benefits inherent in these two intervention delivery modalities, focusing on issues (...) such as convenience, privacy, and stigma of participation. Some risk/benefit variables were implicated in willingness to participate the two intervention modalities. (shrink)

Current UK legislation is impacting upon the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of medical record-based research aimed at benefiting the NHS and the public heath. Whereas previous commentators have focused on the Data Protection Act 1998, the Health and Social Care Act 2001 is the key legislation for public health researchers wishing to access medical records without written consent. The Act requires researchers to apply to the Patient Information Advisory Group for permission to access medical records without written permission. We present (...) a case study of the work required to obtain the necessary permissions from PIAG in order to conduct a large scale public health research project. In our experience it took eight months to receive permission to access basic identifying information on individuals registered at general practices, and a decision on whether we could access clinical information in medical records without consent took 18 months. Such delays pose near insurmountable difficulties to grant funded research, and in our case £560 000 of public and charitable money was spent on research staff while a large part of their work was prohibited until the third year of a three year grant. We conclude by arguing that many of the current problems could be avoided by returning PIAG’s responsibilities to research ethics committees, and by allowing “opt-out” consent for many public health research projects. (shrink)

Discussions of risk taking in the modern business organization frequently focus upon the behavior of individual moral agents. Here I attempt to identify some of the complexities of risk taking when it is a group phenomenon and to do so in such a way as to shed some light upon the ethics of group risk taking in business organizations.

Harms and risks to groups and third-parties can be significant in the context of research, particularly in data-centric studies involving genomic, artificial intelligence, and/or machine learning technologies. This article explores whether and how United States federal regulations should be adapted to better align with current ethical thinking and protect group interests. Three aspects of the Common Rule deserve attention and reconsideration with respect to group interests: institutional review board (IRB) assessment of the risks/benefits of research; disclosure requirements in (...) the informed consent process; and criteria for waivers of informed consent. In accordance with respect for persons and communities, investigators and IRBs should systematically consider potential group harm when designing and reviewing protocols, respectively. Research participants should be informed about any potential group harm in the consent process. We call for additional public discussion, empirical research, and normative analysis on these issues to determine the right regulatory and policy path forward. (shrink)

Previous research has discovered a curious phenomenon: groups cooperate less than individuals in a deterministic prisoner’s dilemma game, but cooperate more than individuals when uncertainty is introduced into the game. We conducted two studies to examine three possible processes that might drive groups to be more cooperative than individuals in reducing risks: group risk concern, group cooperation expectation, and pressure to conform to social norms. We found that ex post guilt aversion and ex-post blame avoidance cause (...) class='Hi'>group members to be more risk concerned than individuals under uncertainty. These concerns drive groups to choose the cooperation (and risk-reduction) strategy more frequently than individuals. Groups also have higher cooperation expectations for their corresponding groups than individuals have for their corresponding individuals. We found no evidence of pressure to conform to social norms driving groups to be more cooperative than individuals. (shrink)

With the development of economic globalization and the policy guidance of International Financial Reporting Standards, the overseas investment of Chinese enterprises has been greatly affected. To study the overseas investment risks of Chinese enterprises, this paper applies a risk analysis model to summarize and analyze the results of overseas investment of Haier from 2008 to 2020. This paper defines the risk analysis model as risk identification, risk assessment, and risk response, and studies overseas investment risks (...) including political, economic, cultural, legal, cost, epidemic, and business risks. The existence of various risks is identified in the company’s overseas investment projects;. The overseas investment risks of Haier are evaluated, through a comprehensive evaluation method combining qualitative and quantitative, financial data, and market response;. In view of the deficiencies of the existing risk prevention measures in the overseas investment of enterprises, some reasonable suggestions are purposed. The innovation of this paper are: This paper combines IFRS 9, IFRS 15, and IFRS 16, selects theories, and combines cases to evaluate the risks of overseas investment that are difficult to quantify, and analyzes the risks of overseas investment by Z-value models and market effects. This research method has pertinence and applicability to enterprises investing overseas. (shrink)

Current UK legislation is impacting upon the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of medical record-based research aimed at benefiting the NHS and the public heath. Whereas previous commentators have focused on the Data Protection Act 1998, the Health and Social Care Act 2001 is the key legislation for public health researchers wishing to access medical records without written consent. The Act requires researchers to apply to the Patient Information Advisory Group for permission to access medical records without written permission. We present (...) a case study of the work required to obtain the necessary permissions from PIAG in order to conduct a large scale public health research project. In our experience it took eight months to receive permission to access basic identifying information on individuals registered at general practices, and a decision on whether we could access clinical information in medical records without consent took 18 months. Such delays pose near insurmountable difficulties to grant funded research, and in our case £560 000 of public and charitable money was spent on research staff while a large part of their work was prohibited until the third year of a three year grant. We conclude by arguing that many of the current problems could be avoided by returning PIAG’s responsibilities to research ethics committees, and by allowing “opt-out” consent for many public health research projects. (shrink)

Algorithmic predictions are promising for insurance companies to develop personalized risk models for determining premiums. In this context, issues of fairness, discrimination, and social injustice might arise: Algorithms for estimating the risk based on personal data may be biased towards specific social groups, leading to systematic disadvantages for those groups. Personalized premiums may thus lead to discrimination and social injustice. It is well known from many application fields that such biases occur frequently and naturally when prediction models are (...) applied to people unless special efforts are made to avoid them. Insurance is no exception. In this paper, we provide a thorough analysis of algorithmic fairness in the case of insurance premiums. We ask what “fairness” might mean in this context and how the fairness of a premium system can be measured. For this, we apply the established fairness frameworks of the fair machine learning literature to the case of insurance premiums and show which of the existing fairness criteria can be applied to assess the fairness of insurance premiums. We argue that two of the often-discussed group fairness criteria, independence (also called statistical parity or demographic parity) and separation (also known as equalized odds), are not normatively appropriate for insurance premiums. Instead, we propose the sufficiency criterion (also known as well-calibration) as a morally defensible alternative that allows us to test for systematic biases in premiums towards certain groups based on the risk they bring to the pool. In addition, we clarify the connection between group fairness and different degrees of personalization. Our findings enable insurers to assess the fairness properties of their risk models, helping them avoid reputation damage resulting from potentially unfair and discriminatory premium systems. (shrink)

Targeting high-risk populations for public health interventions is a classic tool of public health promotion programs. This practice becomes thornier when racial groups are identified as the at-risk populations. I present the particular ethical and epistemic challenges that arise when there are low-risk subpopulations within racial groups that have been identified as high-risk for a particular health concern. I focus on two examples. The black immigrant population does not have the same hypertension risk as US-born (...) African Americans. Similarly, Finnish descendants have a far lower rate of cystic fibrosis than other Caucasians. In both cases the exceptional nature of these subpopulations has been largely ignored by the designers of important public health efforts, including the recent US government dietary recommendations. I argue that amending the publicly-disseminated risk information to acknowledge these exceptions would be desirable for several reasons. First, recognizing low-risk subpopulations would allow more efficient use of limited resources. Communicating this valuable information to the subpopulations would also promote truth-telling. Finally, presenting a more nuanced empirically-supported representation of which groups are at known risk of diseases (not focusing on mere racial categories) would combat harmful biological race essentialist views held by the public. (shrink)

This paper investigates the behavior of contestants in the game show “Quiz Taxi” when faced with the decision whether to bet the winnings they have acquired on a final “double or nothing” question. The decision in this natural experiment is made by groups of two or three persons. This setup enables the decision-making process to be studied with regard to group and communication characteristics. The contestants show fairly risk averse behavior. There is also a significant heterogeneity in attitude (...) to risk. In particular, all-female groups are much less likely to go for the risky option. Furthermore, decision-making behavior appears to vary across differently composed groups and prior performance. The study also documents the importance of discussions: The propensity to gamble increases with discussion length, and the correlation between communication content and the final choice is strong, indicating that time and subjective context are important features of decisions made under risk. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the comparison of individual and group decision-making, in a stochastic inter-temporal problem in two decision environments, namely risk and ambiguity. Using a consumption/saving laboratory experiment, we investigate behaviour in four treatments: individual choice under risk; group choice under risk; individual choice under ambiguity and group choice under ambiguity. Comparing decisions within and between decision environments, we find an anti-symmetric pattern. While individuals are choosing on average closer to the theoretical optimal (...) predictions, compared to groups in the risk treatments, groups tend to deviate less under ambiguity. Within decision environments, individuals deviate more when they choose under ambiguity, while groups are better planners under ambiguity rather than under risk. Our results extend the often observed pattern of individuals behaving more optimally under risk, to its dynamic dimension. (shrink)

Most decision-making research in economics focuses on individual decisions. Yet, we know, from psychological research in particular, that individual preferences can be sensitive to social pressures. In this paper, we study the impact of a group environment on individual preferences for risky and ambiguous prospects. In our experiment, each participant was invited to make a series of lottery-choice decisions in two different conditions. In the Alone condition, individuals made private choices, whereas in the Group condition, individuals belonged to (...) a three-person group and group members’ choices were aggregated according to either a majority or unanimity rule. This design allows us to study the impact of a group environment on individuals’ attitude towards both risky and ambiguous prospects, while controlling for the decision rule used in the group. Our experimental results show that when individuals are in the Group condition, they tend to be less risk averse and more ambiguity averse than when they are not part of a group. Our experiment also suggests that the decision rule matters as it shows that these two trends tend to be stronger when the group implements a unanimity rule. Specifically, we found that individuals who belong to a group implementing a unanimity rule are significantly less risk averse than individuals who belong to a group that relies on the majority rule. We obtained a similar—but non-significant—result under ambiguity. (shrink)

There is scarce knowledge about the influence of the professional group, education, and age on public perspectives on the risks and benefits of forensic DNA databases. Based on data collected through an online questionnaire applied to 628 individuals in Portugal, this research fills that gap. More than three quarters of the respondents believed that the Portuguese forensic DNA database can help fight crime more efficiently and develop a swifter and more accurate justice, whereas only approximately half thought that it (...) could deter and prevent crime. Lack of security and control over access to data and the future unforeseen misuses of genetic information were the most relevant risks selected by the participants. Health care and life sciences professionals were more likely to agree with all the benefits, as opposed to those working in the field of law enforcement. More educated and older participants disagreed with benefits more often. Concerns with the risks increased with age. (shrink)

While corporate failures, such as Enron and WorldCom, have focused attention on issues of business ethics, corporate governance and risk management, there is nothing intrinsically new in the reasons behind their collapse. Neither is there anything fresh in the media's rush to identify a scapegoat. An examination of the financial collapse of Mirror Group Newspapers and Barings Bank, demonstrates failures within both these companies' corporate cultures and management systems, which allowed, if not encouraged, unethical behaviour by key individuals. (...) It is argued that a combination of legislation, regulation, effective risk management and appropriate sanctions are needed, if such unethical behaviour, and resulting corporate failure, is to be prevented in future. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how sub-Saharan African immigrant populations in France have been constructed as risk groups by media sources, in political rhetoric, and among medical professionals, drawing on constructs dating to the colonial period. We also examine how political and economic issues have been mirrored and advanced in media visibility and ask why particular populations and the diseases associated with them in the popular imagination have received more attention at certain historical moments. In the contemporary period we (...) analyze how the bodies of West African women and men have become powerful metaphors in the politics of discrimination prevalent in France, in spite of Republican precepts that theoretically disavow cultural and social difference. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to (...) compare the frequency of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

The ethics of health incentive research—a form of public health research—are not well developed, and concerns of justice have been least examined. In this paper, we explore what potential long term harms in relation to justice may occur as a result of such research and whether they should be considered as part of its ethical evaluation. ‘Long term harms’ are defined as harms that contribute to existing systematic patterns of disadvantage for groups. Their effects are experienced on a long term (...) basis, persisting even once an incentive research project ends. We will first establish that three categories of such harms potentially arise as a result of health incentive interventions. We then argue that the risk of these harms also constitutes a morally relevant consideration for health incentive research and suggest who may be responsible for assessing and mitigating these risks. We propose that responsibility should be assigned on the basis of who initiates health incentive research projects. Finally, we briefly describe possible strategies to prevent or mitigate the risk of long term harms to members of disadvantaged groups, which can be employed during the design, conduct and dissemination of research projects. (shrink)

How should we choose on behalf of groups of agents who violate expected utility theory by being risk averse or risk seeking? Unfortunately, we sometimes have to choose either acts that everyone disprefers or acts that are sure to turn out worse than another act. This observation is particularly troubling for risk-expected utility theorists: neither option sits comfortably with their view.

CABLES is both an acronym and metaphor for conceptualizing research participation risk by considering 6 distinct domains in which risks of harm to research participants may exist: cognitive, affective, biological, legal, economic, and social/cultural. These domains are described and illustrated, along with suggestions for minimizing or eliminating the potential hazards to human participants in biomedical and behavioral science research. Adoption of a thoughtful ethical analysis addressing all 6 CABLES strands in designing research provides a strong protective step toward safeguarding (...) and promoting the well-being of study participants. (shrink)

ObjectiveDropout rates are a prominent problem in youth psychotherapy. An important determinant of dropouts is the quality of the therapeutic relationship. This study aimed to evaluate the association between the therapeutic relationship and dropouts in an intensive mentalization-based treatment for adolescents with personality disorders.MethodsPatients included were either dropouts or completers of an intensive MBT. The therapeutic relationship was measured with the child version of the Session Rating Scale, which was completed by the patient after each group therapy session. For (...) each patient, the treatment termination status was indicated by the treatment staff. The reliable change index was calculated for the C-SRS to determine significant changes in the therapeutic relationship.ResultsWhile both groups started with similar scores on the C-SRS, the scores between dropouts and completers differed significantly at the end of the treatment period. On average, during therapy, an increase was seen in the scores of completers, and a decrease was seen in the scores of dropouts. While dropouts could not be predicted based on the C-SRS scores, a significant decrease in C-SRS scores during the last two sessions occurred more often for dropouts than for completers.ConclusionOur findings show that to prevent dropouts, the patient’s judgment of the quality of the therapeutic relationship should be monitored continuously, and decreases discussed with the patient and the group. (shrink)

Stable adaptive strategy of Homo sapiens (SASH) is a result of the integration in the three-module fractal adaptations based on three independent processes of generation, replication, and the implementation of adaptations — genetic, socio-cultural and symbolic ones. The evolutionary landscape SASH is a topos of several evolutionary multi-dimensional vectors: 1) extraversional projective-activity behavioral intention (adaptive inversion 1), 2) mimesis (socio-cultural inheritance), 3) social (Machiavellian) intelligence, 4) the extension of inter-individual communication beyond their own social groups and their own species in (...) the rest of the world, 5) the symbolic system of communication (symbolic inheritance), 6) spiritualistic trans- formation of emotionally-shaped components of mentality, 7) the dominance of the rationalist thought mentality (enhancer of adaptive inverse 1), 8) a recursive distribution of projective-activity intentions on the man himself his genome, psyche and culture (Adaptive Inversion 2), 9) introversional reorientation of the vector of cognitive activity (adaptive inversion 3). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genetics research, like research in sociology and anthropology, creates risks for groups from which research subjects are drawn. This paper considers what sort of protection for groups from the risks of genetics research should be provided and by whom. The paper categorizes harms by distinguishing process‐related from outcome‐related harms and by distinguishing two kinds of group harms. It argues that calls for community engagement are justified with respect to some kinds of harms, but not with respect to others; (...) and it cautions that community engagement may itself be harmful. (shrink)

Over the past years, one of the most contentious topics in policy debates on genetics has been the use of genetic testing in insurance. In the rush to confront concerns about potential abuses of genetic information, most countries throughout Europe and the US have enacted genetics-specific legislation for insurance. Drawing on current debates on the pros and cons of a genetics-specific legislative approach, this article offers empirical insight into how such legislation works out in insurance practice. To this end, ethnographic (...) fieldwork was done in the underwriting departments of Belgian insurance companies. Belgium was one of the first European countries introducing genetics-specific legislation in insurance. Although this approach does not allow us to speak in terms of ‘ the causal effects of the law’, it enables us to point to some developments in insurance practice that are quite different than the law’s original intentions. It will not only become clear that the Belgian genetics-specific legislation does not offer adequate solutions to the underlying issues it was intended for. We will also show that, while the legislation’s focus has been on the inadmissibility of genetic discrimination, at the same time differences are made in the insurance appraisal within the group of the asymptomatic ill. In other words, by giving exclusive legal protection to the group of genetic risks, other non-genetic risk groups are unintendedly being under-protected. From a policy point of view, studying genetics-specific legislation is especially valuable because it forces us to return to first principles: Which risks deserve our legal protection in insurance? Who do we declare our solidarity with? (shrink)

There are certain kinds of risk for which governments, rather than individual actors, are increasingly held responsible. This article discusses how regulatory institutions can ensure an equitable distribution of risk between various groups such as rich and poor, and present and future generations. It focuses on cases of risk associated with technological and biotechnological innovation. After discussing various possibilities and difficulties of distribution, this article proposes a non-welfarist understanding of risk as a burden of cooperation.

Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as a means of mitigating climate change. Although SRM poses new risks, it is sometimes proposed as the ‘lesser evil’. I consider how research and implementation of SRM could be regulated, drawing on what I call a ‘precautionary checklist’, which includes consideration of the longer term political implications of technical change. Particular attention is given to the moral hazard of ‘regulatory drift’, in which strong initial regulation softens through complacency, deliberate deregulation (‘regulatory gift’) (...) and the limited constituency of people with the skills to regulate (‘thin markets’). I propose the strengthening of civil society groups to keep regulators in check. (shrink)

According to Jonathan Quong’s _moral status account_ of liability to defensive harm, an agent is liable to defensive harm only when she mistakenly treats others as if their moral status is diminished (for example, as if they lack a right that they in fact possess). Quong argues that, by the lights of the moral status account, a conscientious driver (Driver) who faultlessly threatens to kill Pedestrian is not liable to defensive harm. Quong argues that Driver’s action is evidence-relative permissible, despite (...) the risks it imposes, because the general practice of prudent driving is permissible. The practice is permissible because (a) its risks do not disproportionately fall on some groups rather than others, (b) the threatened harms are incidental, and (c) the risk that driving imposes is acceptable in light of the benefits everyone derives from driving. Because the correct moral theory tells us that prudent driving is permissible, Pedestrian lacks a right that Driver refrain from driving. Hence, Driver does not, by driving, treat Pedestrian as lacking a right that Pedestrian in fact possesses. Driver is not liable to defensive force. I argue, against Quong, that cost–benefit analyses of types of risky activity cannot justify individual tokens of risk imposition. Actions that risk incidentally harming others must be justified by the prospective benefits of that token action. Hence, Driver’s imposition of risk on Pedestrian cannot be justified by the benefits of the general practice of driving. I argue that the permissibility of Driver’s imposing risk on Pedestrian via prudent driving turns on whether Driver is willing to internalise at least the foreseeable costs of that risky action. One can lack a right that a person refrain from performing a risky action whilst possessing a right not to be harmed by that risky action. Even if Pedestrian cannot reasonably demand that Driver refrain from driving, she can reasonably demand that Driver refrain from forcing her to bear the costs of his driving. (shrink)

This paper investigates the circumstances under which it is morally permissible to impose non-negligible risks of serious harm on innocent civilians in order not to endanger tangible cultural heritage during armed conflict. Building on a previous account of the value of cultural heritage, it is argued that tangible cultural heritage is valuable because of how it contributes to valuable and meaningful human lives. Taking this account as the point of departure I examine the claim that commanders should be prepared to (...) risk lives of innocent civilians in order to avoid harm to tangible cultural heritage. I argue that imposing high risks of serious harm on innocent civilians without their consent constitutes a wrong that can be justified only in order to avoid a greater evil. It is then argued that damage to cultural heritage sites rarely constitutes the greater evil when weighed against the imposition of non-consensual risks of serious harm on innocent civilians, especially when the risk is substantial. Still, imposing substantial risks might be morally permissible under the condition that they are consensually imposed, even if they are not the lesser evil. However, I argue that even if one has reason to suspect that there are civilians who might consent to at least some significant risks in order to avoid damage to their cultural heritage, it is not clear that commanders should take this into account when deciding what to do. Unless all of those who are at risk consent, the fact that some of those whose lives are at risk consent to the risk of being killed do not make it morally permissible to impose this risk on the group as a whole. (shrink)