Have you ever read or listened to a news article about some corporation or government agency who propose to do something that affects a lot of people and who justify it by saying that it has never been proven that action X is harmful? Did you think that there was something subtly twisted about this approach? You aren’t alone.
This is a very close analogue of the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle of criminal law, but its use in civil matters leads to public harm. It places the onus of proving harm to the public on the shoulders of those who would be harmed. A good example of this principle at work was the stance taken by big tobacco companies who wanted to continue selling cigarettes. The public had to prove that smoking cigarettes led to health problems and death before government placed any restrictions on the tobacco companies. I’m a Canadian, but I still remember the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr C. Everett Koop who practically stood on his head and spit knickles, trying to do something about Big Tobacco. Koop’s decision to represent the public interest against Big Tobacco was influential in Canada as well, as evidenced by the Canadian Tobacco Act. Score one for the good guys. The problem with this little history of Koop and the Good Guys is that the public had to move heaven and earth to prove that the actions of these corporations were harmful to public welfare before any action at all was taken.
What I and a lot of other folks would like is that if you plan to take some action that seems likely to impact the public (meaning me), that you show that it won’t have any harmful effects. This is called the Precautionary Principle, and I like a write-up by David Apell for Scientific American on the subject. If you are interested in this, there is a good website called The Precautionary Principle Project.
Stay tuned, because this is an emerging political debate that concerns energy, health, environment and human existence. With the emergence of Green Parties in Europe and North America, it will come to the forefront. It is already a principle of government in Germany and Sweden and it is going to spread. I’ll have a lot more to say about it as time goes on.
