ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces precautionary principle and explains its relevance to environmental health and to bioethics in general. It then discusses some of the applications of the Precautionary Principle to bioethics and biomedicines, and the difference that heeding it can make to the prospects of future generations. The Precautionary Principle amounts to the Principle of Maximin, according to which agents should select the course of action among their options of which the worst outcome would be the least bad. The Precautionary Principle applies, of course, to many other human practices, such as the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with probable detriment to distant peoples, future generations and countless nonhuman species; taking it seriously at all levels of society, and intervening accordingly, could make a very large difference with regard to the irreversibility of carbon footprint.
