Framing, Filtering and Fixing: The Ethics of Risk Communication

Abstract

There are many puzzles about whether and how to communicate risk information, particularly in public health and medical settings. This paper does three things. First, it suggests a model for whether and how to communicate risk which balances concerns about autonomy and concerns about beneficence. Second, it argues that in the case of risk communication, there are also difficult questions, stemming from the reference class problem, about what risks to communicate. Third, it uses the Justified Misalignments framework developed in the first part of the paper to address these puzzles.