{"id":1127,"date":"2011-06-09T15:03:32","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T14:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=1127"},"modified":"2018-08-19T13:52:04","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T12:52:04","slug":"couldnt-find-the-language-the-positive-counterparts-of-risk-and-hazards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2011\/06\/09\/couldnt-find-the-language-the-positive-counterparts-of-risk-and-hazards\/","title":{"rendered":"Couldn&#8217;t find the language &#8211; the positive counterparts of risk and hazards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By David Hunter<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Continuing my recent theme of the impact of language on ethics and decision making I&#8217;m presently writing a paper on the use of claims based on justice to object to new technologies such as human enhancement or synthetic biology. In the process of writing this paper I&#8217;ve encountered a rather odd gap in our language. It is the case when discussing future technologies that the harms involved are more properly thought of as risks (that is uncertain harms where the probability of the harm is predictable) and hazards (that is uncertain harms where the probability of the harm is not predictable). The same applies to the benefits of future technology but we don&#8217;t have the language to directly describe them thusly, ie there is no obvious counterparts to risk and hazard in regards to benefit. This seems odd given that benefits can be just as uncertain as harms.<\/p>\n<p>And while we might think of this as just a linguistic oddity it may actually have an impact on decision making. For example in research ethics it is common to talk about the risks and benefits of research &#8211; but this creates<\/p>\n<p>Any suggestions of appropriate terms would be gratefully received!<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By David Hunter Continuing my recent theme of the impact of language on ethics and decision making I&#8217;m presently writing a paper on the use of claims based on justice to object to new technologies such as human enhancement or synthetic biology. In the process of writing this paper I&#8217;ve encountered a rather odd gap [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2011\/06\/09\/couldnt-find-the-language-the-positive-counterparts-of-risk-and-hazards\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[963,563,397,472],"tags":[384,1856,7944,317,7942],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curios","category-language","category-research-ethics","category-thinking-aloud","tag-david-hunter","tag-enhancement","tag-language","tag-research","tag-research-ethics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Couldn&#039;t find the language - the positive counterparts of risk and hazards - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2011\/06\/09\/couldnt-find-the-language-the-positive-counterparts-of-risk-and-hazards\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Couldn&#039;t find the language - the positive counterparts of risk and hazards - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By David Hunter Continuing my recent theme of the impact of language on ethics and decision making I&#8217;m presently writing a paper on the use of claims based on justice to object to new technologies such as human enhancement or synthetic biology. 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