Posted by John Nichols on October 06, 2005 at 15:12:32 from 165.91.198.54 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: Mine exploration (was Re: Church Beck as the River Amazon?) posted by Jock on October 06, 2005 at 00:29:02:
Risk: - This is pure AR ethical stuff as far as I can see so I will go into some detail.
I think we need to define a few terms here:
1. Voluntary risk (CAR)- this is the risk assumed by a competent human being who undertakes an activity. The argument here is a competent individual and how is it defined. The second argument is the activity.
So for instance walking alongside a road, we have a reasonable idea of the risk of being run down. We could always stick to back yards, but in Texas we run the much greater danger of being shot as an intruder, so we stick to the roads.
2. Involuntary risk (IAR) - this is the risk assumed by a competent individual undertaking an activity in which they have no control over the risk. So flying in a plane is an involuntary risk. The airline industry goes to great lengths to make sure you think it is safe and as such they make it safe. Flying is inherently dangerous. The best people on this risk are the UK Health and Safety Executive. Without a doubt England has a very good set of laws and regulations that the world should copy (personal opinion).
I wrote the following stuff for a journal paper yet to be published but it defines the modified involuntary accepted risk ie the risk of a 5 year old drowning in a back yard pool. I am sorry it is long but it gives you an idea of how hard it can be to define a new concept in a journal paper.
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Hall and Wiggins (2000 184) provide a clear picture of the current process of determining risk within the democratic political system. Hall and Wiggins further indirectly but clearly identify two types of risk. These types of risk have been separately designated for this paper to clearly enumerate the work of Hall and Wiggins. These two types of risk, we have now designated by symbol, are consciously accepted risk (CAR) such as driving in a car, or swimming in the ocean, and involuntary accepted risk (IAR) such as working in a building or an unknown environmental risk such as toxic lead levels.
The critical point in determining the risk category is firstly the ability to determine that the risk is in the CAR category for a normal adult and that it is not an IAR where the risk is externally controlled. A motor vehicle trip considering the viewpoint of the driver is clearly a CAR. Shannon and Pyle (1993) provide the annual motor vehicle death rate for 1988 in the US as 0.19 %. The point of a passenger is set aside for this paper. Nevertheless, we must also accept that some risks that are nominally in the CAR category are a moderated risk.
Here we mean for the definition of a moderated rate that the ability of a human to understand and competently accept the CAR risk is both age and/or mental competence dependent. We must accept that a one year old has no ability to accept a CAR risk or that some one, who is say deeply clinically depressed may be unable to competently judge a CAR.
Secondly, the ability of the humans who endure the CAR or IAR risk levels to have the risk modified is controlled often by the immediate social environment whether governmental, societal, and familial.
The example of infant mortality in the first year is such a moderated risk level. This risk concept is an extension to those concepts of Hall and Wiggins. We have designated this combinational risk type as a moderated IAR, termed a MIAR. The assertion that it is fundamentally a derivative of an IAR is based on the perception and knowledge of the person at risk to make a competent decision. In our example, the infant has no control and the familial control is influenced by the societal factors.
Societal controls are often at a national governmental level rather than even a state level. So, the provision of health care to infants in the first year is controlled at a national level, albeit through the states if the parents lack the funds or access to funds to provide this care. This variation in the community accepted risk is clearly evident in the United States by considering the differential levels of wealth and income distribution between states, and the significant and currently politically accepted infant mortality rate differences between states (Shannon and Pyle 1993).
One IAR from the point of the infant, that is measured on a worldwide basis, is the mortality rates up to age one for each live birth. As far as the infant is concerned it is an IAR, the combination of acceptable economic levels of parental access to food and medicine moderates the rate. The Japanese data provides the level where there is close to uniform access to a minimum level of food and medical care. The fatality rate for Japanese infants in 1989 was 0.5%. The infant mortality rate for the US as an average in 1989 was 1%. The peak fatality rate for the US in the 1980s for South Carolina in 1985 was 1.8%. This increase in South Carolina is attributed by Shannon and Pyle (1993) to ‘nutritional status of mothers, prenatal care for mothers and children and neonatal care were insufficient’, which is clearly a political process and one directly amenable to systems analysis.
The Japanese infant mortality rate is considered an achievable global IAR. The Japanese system can be considered to describe a risk that can only be lowered on a global basis with improvements in medicine and access to adequate food and clean water. The lowering of the death rates for premature babies is an example in the last century of improvements solely in medical treatment; this is clearly a fundamental change in the underlying IAR and cannot really be further moderated in the long term at other than a global level.
The difference in the South Carolina and Japanese fatality rates is deemed one measure of an acceptable US MIAR that is clearly due to the prevailing economic and political circumstances in SC. This difference is 1.3%. Here we must reasonably assume that there are no other underlying reasons for the difference. We offer no ethical opinion on the actual acceptability to society of such a death rate other than noting its existence as fact.
This problem is controlled clearly at a state and national level and so falls within the category of a national MIAR and provides a defining point to understanding acceptable risk levels to the broader community, speaking strictly from an ethical viewpoint.
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If I have not lost you an MIAR is a society defined or controlled device to save lives or lack of such a device. Examples are:
1. Requiring the fencing in of all pools. (saves toddlers and alcoholics from drowning, it must be successful in Australia as several men in my family are still alive).
2. Covering over the irrigation canals in Griffith Australia has reduced infant and child drowning. It is the steep sides that are a problem as in pools, which is why detention basins in Australia are typically designed with shallow 1 in 6 sides so people can walk out of them.
3. Flu vaccine given to 1 to 5 year olds reduces the incidence of death in the elderly - here we have the example of Nancy and the measles, do not let Nancy get near everyone who has not had the measles. For the flu vac, the children typically start to get the flu in the preschool setting and then transfer the flu at home to the elderly. This was proved by national experiment in Japan. If we are unlucky we will see an example of this with the avian flu in SE Asia.
We can define the IAR - the UKHSE do it as 0.1% per year. This is why the tunnel under the channel is so safe.
We can define an CAR, climbing Kachenjunga, the real one, has about a 1:6 mortality rate. Even as well prepared as climbing teams are 1 in 6 do not come back, if I remember my stats correctly (and I am to lazy to look it up). But for instance the death rate amoung clinically depressed people is about 1 in 6 per year (I think this number is correct again from long lost reading) which is why some can be locked up for their own safety. The problem is that this power was often abused in the period prior to 1970, so as to lock up the society undesirables ( I can not define undesirable but i have seen Dad turn down several requests for committing someone who thought was not sick).
Peter H this is why the Chester police will take our tie, shoe laces and belts when we are locked up for drunk and disorderly on the 28th May 2006. They don't want us to top ourselves.
We can only define an MIAR indirectly which I do for fatalities in earthquakes by comparison to the SC death rate for 0-1 year olds at 1.3% per annum. Here I am merely saying that we direct the limited world funds to limiting MIAR's in a logical way. So we do not spend US government money on a super safe highway in California to resist earthquakes if at most 10 people could be killed by its failure if the same funds could save 300 lives in SC over the same time period.
So AR's famous quote "Better drowned than duffers if not duffers will not drown" is a classic case of authority, Ted Walker, deciding that the children have moved from MIAR to CAR and that as CAR they can decide for themselves. The point is to what extent is this decision based on the character of Susan being adult like. Although it is interesting that Nancy is allowed the same freedom and one would not class Nancy as a non risk taker. Another example is climbing Kachenjunga in SD, nancy has not even told CF about the adventure.
Now mother is still a bit undecided in SA and introduces MIAR's as they make mistakes. This is reasonable as they learn and she learns what needs to be structured. Roger is clearly in the beginning a MIAR but John and Susan are his M. Teh fact that he could not swim in SA and he is in a boat without a life jacket and they were known at the time is a bit of a puzzle.
Which is what we need to do with the US government that is consistently a very poor performer in reducing MIARS on a national level. An average age at death difference of about 4 years proves this over Europe, Japan and Australia. Living in the US is like living a real laboratory of life, it is scary how much they accept simple and preventable dangers. The problem is that they do not see other national systems and so believe this is normal and healthy.
I can not see that AR does not but define well the ethical concept of risk and where it resides in his statement. It is simple in its words but stunning in the meaning.
So yes parents should not let their children wander off, but we have a couple of billion children and some will wander off, if they fence the pools and cover the irrigation channels with steep sides they are likely not to drown. Do we fence the lakes etc, very impractical and limited benefit again what rate does it impact the death rate as against the cost.
So yes the US government should adopt a program for everyone having health care, will it - unlikely due to the popular idea in the US that everyone has to help themselves - this is a national hazing that reduces the average life span by 4 years and leaves us with a very obese population.
But, yes I will tell a coal mine to put up a safety screen on a bridge crossing a highway if coal is observed to fall from a train as it crosses the bridge and the coal ends up on the roadway. At 100 km/hr a 0.5 kg lump of coal intersecting your head will do a lot of damage and probably kill everyone else in the car. This is a true case study and I was never asked to repeat the inspection although the fence was still there last time I looked.
This is the problem of managers deciding to board up old mines, we have to look at the IAR risk of 0.1% a year so as not to be prosceuted whereas you are thinking of the CAR or MIAR risk of about 1.3% per year when you say leave the mines open. The mine manager is held to a different standard than you are if you walk onto the mine site.
Did I take a long time to explain this - yes cause I am struggling to rewrite the article and this gave me a chance to try out the arguments on an intelligent perceptive bunch of humans, who have a higher ethical sense than most average groups of people.
JMN