Ethical and metaethical criteria for an emerging technology: risk assessment.

This paper examines ethical criteria for the shaping of an emerging technology applied internationally in environmental regulation: quantitative risk assessment-risk management. The role of the physician in its application, especially in the genetic testing that will be employed, underlines the importance of understanding the nature and prospects for reshaping of this technology to enable ethical practice. The Cartesian or mechanistic model (which currently dominates the technology) excludes factors of emotion, making the connection between assessment and management unfruitful functionally and ethically, and makes the model unresponsive to human needs. The emotional factors, nested and mediated in the organic hierarchy of the ecologically-defined community, constitute key psychological, social, cultural and political elements of the total burden of risk. Ethical criteria consistent with an open society are suggested for reshaping the model to enable effective management.