title: The precautionary principle and medical decision making.
abstract: The precautionary principle is a useful strategy for decision-making when physicians and patients lack evidence relating to the potential outcomes associated with various choices. According to a version of the principle defended here, one should take reasonable measures to avoid threats that are serious and plausible. The reasonableness of a response to a threat depends on several factors, including benefit vs. harm, realism, proportionality, and consistency. Since a concept of reasonableness plays an essential role in applying the precautionary principle, this principle gives physicians and patients a decision-making strategy that encourages the careful weighing and balancing of different values that one finds in humanistic approaches to clinical reasoning. Properly understood, the principle presents a worthwhile alternative to approaches to clinical reasoning that apply expected utility theory to decision problems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Humanities, The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA. resnikd@mail.ecu.edu
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Resnik
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making / Q000941:ethics; D003662:Decision Theory; D028663:Ethical Theory; D026690:Ethics, Clinical; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000941:ethics; D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen / Q000097:blood; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000517:prevention & control; D018570:Risk Assessment
chemical_list: D017430:Prostate-Specific Antigen