ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an ethical evaluation of risk procedures, focusing on some of the generally hidden and deficient values. It outlines a few major value considerations that are usually ignored or underemphasized but are necessary for an ethically adequate approach to risk. Moral values are present in all phases of risk assessment — including its motives, purposes, definitions, methods, and assumptions. Moral values are the very foundations of science, the preconditions of doing science. The chapter suggests that ethicists need to be involved in the formal evaluations of risk decision-making. The concern for scientific integrity and autonomy reflects the moral values of science. Scientists are moral subjects in a moral guild, or else science itself is impossible or corrupted. If all moral values are subjective, relative, or arbitrary, then science itself rests on very flimsy foundations. Particular moral values are also reflected in the specific scientific enterprises of risk assessment and evaluation.
