Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

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MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 217 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. All of these are third-generation problems requiring ethical analysis capable of illuminating policy choices in modern hazard management. Thus, it is particularly troubling that the widely praised National Science Foundation Program on Ethical Values in Science and Technology (EVIST) may be abolished or dismembered even though the work done under its aegis—the development of a competence for ethical analysis and technological choice— promises to combine rigor and compassion. As we eschew the single fix, be it technological or behavioral, we should also avoid the choice of a single ethic. It is possible to create a process that addresses the different needs of groups at risk, leading not to a perfect resolution of ethical dilemmas, but to a fairer distribution of the risks and benefits of technology. Scientific and technological fixes can also help by reducing the overall risk or by identifying and protecting groups that are at greater risk. SHIFTING ATTITUDES, INSTITUTIONS, AND ACTIVITIES Two centuries after the beginning of the industrial-scientific revolution in the design, production, and use of technology, modern societies began the comprehensive management of the technological hazards created in its wake. Whether one dates the beginnings of this effort with the popular outcry of Earth Day 1970, as I have, or from the early warning of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962, or from the classic paper of Chauncey Starr (1969) that started the professional development of comparative hazard management, the movement is less than a quarter of a century old. The real changes in the way society handles technological hazards are less than 15 years old. But so profound has been the shift in attitudes, institutions, and activities that, in retrospect, these changes may well be viewed as no less revolutionary than the technological revolution that preceded them. Over the next 15 years the changes will be less profound, but the problems may be no less important. I foresee four sets of concerns. The first I have discussed extensively—the limitations, strains, and contradictions of the first 15 years of activity and the search for alternatives to ease or resolve them. Another set of concerns relates to the major changes under way in the design, production, and use of technology. New products will bring new hazards. Old products and processes in new locales will bring new hazard problems. The rapid restructuring of world industrial production will reduce the hazards in places that have learned to cope with them and move hazards to places where the knowledge and resources for control are not available. At