ABSTRACT
The primary claim of this chapter is that a robust understanding of the precautionary principle (“PP”) in population health carries significant ethical and policy implications regarding sports-related traumatic brain injury (“TBI”). The chapter argues that an historicist lens is critical to understanding how regulated industries in the modern era have wielded uncertainty regarding epidemiologic causation to forestall regulatory action. This strategy violates the PP, which is increasingly understood as a basis for public health action in general. The PP essentially relaxes the standards of proof—especially causal inferences—needed to justify collective action for public health, and is therefore an ethical keystone for public health of any kind. The chapter concludes by urging a repudiation of the political strategy that trades on scientific doubt in context of sports-related TBI precisely because such tactics essentially neuter the PP.
