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 Powell • What’s the Harm?
Russell Powell

What’s the Harm? An Evolutionary Theoretical

Critique of the Precautionary Principle

ABSTRACT. The precautionary principle has been hailed as the new paradigm for
contending with health and environmental risk in the context of emerging tech-
nologies. In the philosophical literature, however, it has been met with skepticism.
Weaker conceptions of the precautionary principle are accused of being trivial or
vacuous, while stronger versions are criticized for issuing irrationally restrictive
or even contradictory prescriptions. Although the precautionary approach suffers
from a number of conceptual defects, it nonetheless could be justified in certain
biological domains if it were the case that evolution tended to produce optimal,
delicately balanced equilibria that generally coincided with what we value. This
justification fails, however, since it is premised on assumptions about the causal
structure of the world that do not accord with contemporary evolutionary theory.
This does not exclude the possibility that the precautionary principle may be war-
ranted for other reasons or in certain settings, but it does remove a potentially
powerful rationalization, one that has motivated much of the scholarship, law,
and policy that is inclined toward the precautionary approach.

T
he precautionary principle (“the Principle”) has been widely
embraced as the new paradigm for contending with biological
and environmental risk in the context of emerging technologies.
Increasingly, it is being incorporated into domestic, supranational, and
international legal regimes as part of a general overhaul of health and
environmental regulation.1 Codifications of the Principle typically are
vague, with their content intentionally left for scholars to debate, decision
makers to interpret, and the courts to flesh out through case law. Gener-
ally speaking, the Principle holds that scientific uncertainty will not be a
bar to preventive regulatory action, and that decision makers should err
on the side of caution when harms either to organisms or the environ-
ment are implicated. The Principle does not purport to show whether a

Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Vol. 20, No. 2, 181–206 © 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 kennedy institute of ethics journal • june 2010

particular risk is ethically justifiable or politically acceptable, nor does it

aim to resolve contested concepts and methodologies in moral and political
philosophy. Instead, it is a decision-making schematic that is designed to
manage risk in the context of scientific and regulatory uncertainty.
The precautionary approach has been widely adopted, due in part to
the general distrust of existing regulatory regimes2 as well as the common-
sensical nature of precaution as an action-guiding principle. Like Pascal’s
famous wager over the existence of God, the precautionary approach
has intuitive appeal. After all, who would object to “being cautious” or
“going slow” with respect to developing technologies that pose biological
and environmental hazards of unknown magnitudes and probabilities?
Just as prudence in the face of divine uncertainty leads Pascal to con-
clude that one should live a life of religious duty, prudence in the face of
scientific uncertainty dictates that policymakers should err on the side
of restriction when faced with the unknown consequences of a powerful
new biotechnology.
Despite its general popularity, the Principle has been greeted with far
less enthusiasm in the philosophical literature. Weaker conceptions of
the Principle are accused of being trivial or vacuous, and thus failing to
provide any substantive guidance in decision making. Stronger versions
are criticized for issuing irrationally restrictive or even contradictory pre-
scriptions, leading to a moral quietism that amounts to a reductio of the
Principle. Analytical attempts to stake out an acceptable middle ground
have proved largely unavailing.
In this paper, I pursue a new line of justification. A common feature of
the Principle, especially as it concerns the modification of organisms and
ecosystems, is a prima facie preference for the regulation of activity that
proposes to intervene in natural living systems. This preference would
be justified, I argue, if it were the case that evolution tended to produce
optimal, delicately balanced equilibria that generally coincided with what
humans value. I show that this tripartite justification of the Principle fails,
however, since it is premised on assumptions about the causal structure of
the world that are at odds with contemporary evolutionary theory. This
dissonance is noteworthy, since a flawed interpretation of evolutionary
science can lead to a misguided environmental ethic.
My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I provide an overview of the
Principle, rehearse the various objections that have been leveled against
it, and show why attempts to modify it in light of these critiques have
proved largely unsuccessful. Second, I argue that a prima facie preference

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 Powell • What’s the Harm?

against activity that would intervene in living functional systems would

be warranted if the natural order was composed of optimally, delicately,
complexly, and benevolently configured equilibria. I show that legal and
academic approaches to precaution are often committed to or motivated
by some or all of the above propositions, which I collectively refer to as
the “benevolent balance of nature” metaphor. Finally, I argue that this
view is premised on a conception of the living world that does not accord
with the structure of evolutionary theory. This does not exclude the pos-
sibility that the Principle may be warranted for other reasons or in certain
settings, but it does remove a potentially powerful rationalization, one
which seems to have motivated much of the scholarship, law, and policy
that is inclined toward the precautionary approach.

THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE

It is somewhat misleading to refer to the precautionary principle, since

the doctrine enjoys no canonical formulation. Instead, it amounts to a
largely disconnected constellation of legal, political, and academic articula-
tions that fall within the rubric of what might be called the precautionary
approach. Despite volumes of ink spilled in its name and a multiplicity
of formulations to choose from, the Principle has received a particularly
chilling reception in philosophical circles. To explain why, I review several
influential versions of the Principle and their corresponding objections.
Although it is subject to a great deal of variation, the Principle generally
includes references to organismic or environmental harm, scientific or regu-
latory uncertainty, and a default presumption in favor of preventive action.
Most critiques of the Principle are directly related to its strength, which
in turn depends on two things: (1) the threshold trigger for precautionary
action, including the probability and magnitude of the contemplated harm,
and (2) the nature of the preventive action prescribed. The strength of the
Principle is inversely proportional to (1) and directly proportional to (2).
That is to say, the lower its trigger threshold, the broader its scope of ap-
plication; the more extreme its prescription, the greater its restriction of
the target activity. It follows that the weakest conceivable version of the
Principle entails trigger conditions that are rarely met, such as harms of
apocalyptic magnitudes and extremely high probabilities, and a prescrip-
tion that only minimally restricts the object behavior. The strongest possible
version, on the other hand, entails easy-to-meet evidentiary criteria, such
as the indication of harms of any magnitude or probability, and extreme
forms of regulation, such as prohibition or moratorium (cf. Gardiner

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 kennedy institute of ethics journal • june 2010

2006). Although there are few authors who actually hold these extreme
positions, much of the literature is spent constructing and demolishing
these straw men (Percival 2006).
Weaker versions of the Principle are criticized for being impotent,
vacuous, and trivial, and viewed as so narrow in scope and empty in pre-
scriptive content that they add little to existing theories of policymaking
and adjudication. Even worse, they do little to prevent imminent moral
disasters brought about by a failure to regulate, and hence they are far
too permissive. Stronger varieties of the Principle, on the other hand, are
charged with an irrational, parochial focus on risk-avoidance and envi-
ronmental harm, which causes them to overlook the potential benefits
of nonregulation and the importance of nonenvironmental factors. By
taking low levels of environmental risk to be dispositive in decision mak-
ing, stronger versions of the Principle can lead to quietism in the face of
imminent moral disasters brought about by a failure to permit, and hence
they are far too restrictive.3 Since risk often will attend to action and
inaction simultaneously, extreme versions of the Principle merely trade
the potential of one catastrophe for another, potentially undercutting the
very goal they are designed to achieve—namely, the protection of human
health and the environment.
Furthermore, because mere possibilities with unknown probabilities
are easy to fabricate, the Principle can be viewed as enjoining both ac-
tion and inaction simultaneously, leading to what has been described as
“moral paralysis” (Sunstein 2003). Some authors have claimed that this
incoherence is merely an epistemic artifact that arises in application of the
Principle, not a problem inherent to the Principle itself. But if the Principle
is of fundamentally pragmatic value, as many believe that it is, then its
on-the-job performance bears directly on whether one should accept or
reject it. Although some authors have touted the simplicity of the Principle,
elegance is not always a virtue, especially in the context of commercial
regulation, which is designed to accommodate a multitude of values and
competing social interests, not to mention a wealth of empirical data and
a broad distribution of risk tolerances. As Ed Soule (2004) has pointed
out, folk wisdom may be useful in everyday life where one is guided by a
stable set of beliefs, preferences, and values, but it may be less appropri-
ate in the context of regulatory judgments that emerge from democratic
deliberation. The rub is that once the Principle is modified in order to
accommodate these thorny interest-balancing acts, say by engrafting a
cost-effectiveness provision onto it (as some proponents have attempted to

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 Powell • What’s the Harm?

do), it begins to look more like a subspecies of the conventional approach

to risk management, rather than a new genus of ethical decision making.
Yet absent these modifications, the Principle is wont to lead policymakers
in the wrong direction or in no direction at all.
To make these criticisms more concrete, consider two influential and
oft-cited formulations of the Principle. The first, contained in the Rio Dec-
laration on Environment and Development (1992, Principle 15), presents
a relatively moderate version of the Principle:
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be
[taken]. . . .Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack
of full scientific certainty [regarding causal relations] shall not be used as
a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental
degradation.

This is a fairly weak version of the Principle, since it (1) requires a high
threshold showing of harm—i.e., that which is demonstrably serious or
irreversible—and (2) contemplates an interest-balancing analysis. It is
not obvious what the Rio Declaration offers above and beyond existing
methods of risk management, but I shall consider two possible contribu-
tions.
First, it might increase the salience of factors that decision makers and
their constituencies tend to overlook or underestimate given the foibles of
human psychology, such as the tendency to ignore low-risk outcomes in
the face of probable short-term gains. But if so, there is a danger that the
Principle will encourage a comparably dangerous disposition—namely,
the tendency to downplay the risks associated with nonintervention. For
example, in some clinical and research settings, there is a tendency for
caregivers to allocate disproportionate attention and decisional weight
to the risks of medical intervention, and hence to neglect the potentially
serious consequences of not intervening (Lyerly et al. 2007). Likewise,
patients often focus primarily on the risks of taking a medication, rather
than on the risks associated with not taking it. At best, then, the Principle
may be said to trade one irrational human penchant for another, without
demonstrating that one is more pervasive or pernicious than the other.
A second noteworthy feature of the Rio Declaration is its explicit re-
quirement that scientific uncertainty about causal relations not undermine
cost-effective preventive action. If by “scientific uncertainty” the Declara-
tion means “subject to or characterized by intermediate probabilities,”
then it is chasing a red herring. Commercial regulation has never required
incontrovertible proof of causality (Soule 2004), as this would be an
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 kennedy institute of ethics journal • june 2010

impossible standard to meet in epidemiology, ecology, and other fields

that wrestle with multi-factorial, geometrically nonlinear, and irreducibly
statistical causal relations. Even apparently “straightforward” causal rela-
tionships, such as that between smoking and lung cancer, involve imperfect
regularities that are approached via probabilistic theories of causation.
Surely, private and governmental actors should not be allowed to hide
behind a veil of epidemiological—or more broadly scientific—complexity
in order to derogate their moral responsibilities. It is not clear, though,
how scientific uncertainty per se has been used to undermine sensible
regulation, or how the Rio Declaration would ameliorate this problem if
it can be shown to exist.
That being said, perhaps I have rendered a less charitable interpreta-
tion than the Rio Declaration deserves. Admittedly, the Rio Declaration
is not specifically aimed at commercial regulation; rather, it is a more
“philosophical” statement of principles and general obligations meant to
steer the international community toward sustainable forms of develop-
ment. Maybe by “certainty” the Rio Declaration is referring to traditional
standards of scientific evidence, such as might be used to admit expert
evidence in court, or to evaluate professional scientific publications—two
very different standards, incidentally. Indeed, the Commission of European
Communities (2000) emphasizes that the Principle is a guide for decision
making in the public sphere and “should not be confused with the element
of caution that scientists apply in their assessment of scientific data.” It
follows, then, that the Principle sets the evidentiary bar lower than that
which applies to professional scientific literature, although just how much
lower remains unclear. There is good reason to think that in the face of
serious risk, and especially in the absence of any substantial social benefit,
high levels of scientific confidence should not be a necessary condition for
taking reasonable preventive measures. But precisely how high these con-
fidence levels should be, and which actions constitute reasonable avenues
of prevention, are the subjects of vigorous international debate.
Thus, even on the most charitable reading, the Rio Declaration begs all
of the hard questions: How can the set of scientifically credible outcomes be
carved out of the vast universe of logical or physical possibilities? Should
the scientific standards for potential harm and benefit be symmetrical, or
should they be treated differently? How should one inventory and calibrate
the “cost-effective measures” that it contemplates?
A somewhat stronger, but no less problematic, articulation of the
Principle is contained in the published statement of the 1998 Wingspread
Conference:
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 Powell • What’s the Harm?

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environ-

ment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect
relationships are not fully established scientifically. . . . In this context the
proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of
proof. (Wingspread Statement 1998)

On its face, the Wingspread statement is consistent with a very low

threshold showing of potential harm; it includes any activity that threatens
human health or the environment, omitting the “serious or irreversible”
qualification of the Rio Declaration. However, the nature of the recom-
mended course of action is left undefined. Does the Wingspread statement
contemplate a prohibition or something less drastic? What factors should
be taken into account in adjudicating between competing preventive
measures, and how should these factors be treated if not through some
distributional analysis of costs and benefits? Does the language “even if
some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically”
imply that preventive measures need not be backed by compelling scientific
evidence, or does it obviate the need for scientific evidence at all? Like the
Rio Declaration, the Wingspread Statement raises a host of important ques-
tions, but fails to answer any of them (Jordan and O’Riordan 1999).
One response to these objections would be to claim that the details were
intentionally left to the legislatures and courts to flesh out. I am not per-
suaded, however, since the Principle fails to supply even a partial analytical
skeleton for policymakers and jurists to enflesh. Although it does seem to
relax the requisite evidentiary constraints on regulation, and although this
seems sensible enough given the social epistemological defects associated
with private-interest science (see Shrader-Frechette 2007), at the end of
the day the Principle affords little conceptual machinery to distinguish
itself from more traditional methods of risk management.
In recent attempts to salvage the Principle, two limiting strategies have
emerged. The first restricts the scope of the Principle to potential cata-
strophic risk (Sunstein 2007). Even if one could adequately define what
magnitude of harm rises to the level of “catastrophic,” and even if one
grants that there is a legitimate justification for restricting the Principle
in this way, serious problems remain. For instance, a significant fraction
of public health activity entails at least some risk of catastrophic harm.
Most medical, pharmaceutical, and genetic technologies will involve a
non-zero probability of widespread mortality—such as the potential for
deadly side effects in an appreciable segment of the consumer population,
or the prospects of large-scale agricultural failure. And lest one forget, the

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 kennedy institute of ethics journal • june 2010

potential for catastrophic harm, like lesser types of harm, attaches to both
sides of the equation—i.e., is entailed by restriction and permission alike.
For these reasons, it would seem that limiting the Principle to potentially
catastrophic harm does little to restrict its scope of application, and does
not preclude the irrational ways that it could be applied.
A second strategy confines the Principle to a set of application condi-
tions based on a “Rawlsian maxi-min” approach, or one geared toward
minimizing the maximum potential harm (Gardiner 2006). The idea is
to “maximize the minimum” by assessing alternative courses of action
by focusing on their worst potential outcomes and picking the action as-
sociated with the least bad negative outcome. As I see it, there are two
difficulties with this maneuver. First, adopting the maxi-min strategy is
only rational, according to modern decision theory, in contexts in which
there is essentially no information regarding probabilities—that is to say,
it only applies to situations of genuine uncertainty rather than to those of
risk (in the latter case, both outcomes and probabilities can be assigned).
Rarely however do we find ourselves in situations of true uncertainty,
where the relevant outcomes can be identified but their corresponding
likelihoods unknown. Emerging technologies do not crawl mysteriously
out of the primordial soup, as it were; on the contrary, they usually lie
at the intersection of long-standing scientific disciplines, such as physics,
chemistry, and biology, each with a wealth of experimental data and de-
cades of theoretical corroboration. The cumulative, scaffold-like nature
of scientific advance will generally permit the assignment of bounded or
relative probabilities, which in many circumstances will be enough to
undermine the maxi-min strategy.
Second, the maxi-min strategy fails—or does not apply—in circum-
stances where the difference between the worst-case scenarios is marginal
and there is a significant benefit to be gained. Indeed, in virtually all of the
major regulatory debates, significant benefits are at stake, and comparable
doomsday scenarios can be dreamt up. Although genetic engineering and
climate change have been touted as prime candidates for the Rawlsian
maxi-min approach (see, e.g., Gardiner 2006), it is far from clear that such
cases do not involve significant social benefits. For instance, an overriding
objective of the genetic engineering of crops is the alleviation of poverty,
ostensibly by increasing crop yield and decreasing the cost of food (Graffa,
Roland-Holsta, and Zilbermana 2006; McNeil 2001, p. 224). Similarly,
the social and institutional transformation necessary to bring about a
global reduction in carbon emissions could come at a substantial cost—

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 Powell • What’s the Harm?

i.e., negative benefit—to those people and industries reliant on fossil fuels.
Whether the benefits of genetic engineering or the costs associated with
emissions reduction are outweighed by their attendant risks is an entirely
separate question.
In sum, efforts to save the Principle from the foregoing objections by
narrowing its scope of application have been largely ineffective. In what
follows, I pursue a different avenue of justification for the Principle, one
based on the theoretical induction that organisms and ecosystems are caus-
ally configured in such a way that human intervention in these systems
will tend to do more harm than good. If this generalization holds true,
then the Principle can be defended on grounds of general applicability,
obviating the need for a limiting strategy.

THE DEFAULT EPISTEMIC STANCE OF PRECAUTION

Although they vary widely in strength, scope, and wording, one thing
common to most articulations of the precautionary approach is a prima
facie preference for the regulation of activity that would intervene in living
systems, whether on the level of organisms, communities, or ecosystems.
The Principle provides that in such cases, the burden of proof should be
placed on the proponents of said activity to show that it is safe, rather
than on regulators or concerned citizens to demonstrate that it is dan-
gerous (recall the Wingspread formulation previously discussed). This
burden-shifting feature is perhaps the most noteworthy innovation of
the precautionary approach. On this view, activities that would intrude
upon living systems should be presumed harmful unless they are shown
to be otherwise. I will refer to this presumption as the “default epistemic
stance” (DES) of the Principle. Although the weight of this presumption
may vary, it is the DES that sets the precautionary approach apart from
more conventional treatments of environmental risk, especially in the
context of emerging biotechnologies (see Agar 2004).
Although the DES acts as a central framing assumption for much of the
discourse surrounding precaution,4 to my knowledge no one has explicitly
defended it. If the DES can be justified, then this would go a long way
toward vindicating the precautionary approach, at least in connection
with the engineering of organisms and ecosystems. As I see it, there are
two kinds of justifications for the DES. The first, which can easily be dis-
pelled, is an intrinsic normative preference for so-called “natural” harms
as opposed to those that emanate from human action, irrespective of their
relative magnitudes. The second and more plausible rationale is grounded

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 kennedy institute of ethics journal • june 2010

in an induction regarding the causal structure of the living world and its
relationship to human activity. I discuss the intrinsic justification rather
briefly, reserving the bulk of my critique for the latter induction, which I see
as a more plausible foundation for a Principle of general applicability.
One intrinsic rationale for the DES could be the broadly Kantian no-
tion that it is a greater wrong to cause harm than it is to allow the same
harm to occur naturally. Although the meaning of the term “natural”
is normatively loaded and famously problematic (see Ereshefsky 2007;
Hull 1988), one might use it synonymously with “caused by nonhuman
(or more broadly, nonintentional) forces of nature,” thereby avoiding the
implication of anything preternatural. The idea here would be that the duty
not to harm is prior to and preempts the affirmative obligation to rescue,
at least in the context of naturally occurring harms. But even if we grant
a morally relevant distinction between positive and negative duties, this
stipulation is not sufficient to justify the DES.5 For in addition to this, one
must believe that the mere possibility that one could accidentally cause
harm in attempting to prevent it demands that one refrain from acting.
This notion is patently unacceptable, even on strict Kantian grounds. Were
one to embrace it, there would be little room for supererogation, such as
charity, altruism, good samaritanism, and the like, behaviors that often
cannot be performed without some degree of risk to the beneficiary. The
fact that there is some possibility of making things worse by acting obvi-
ously should not foreclose reasonable avenues of harm prevention.
A related but equally unconvincing justification for the DES is that
anthropogenic harms are intrinsically worse than harms of the same mag-
nitude produced by nonhuman physical processes. This is in stark contrast
to traditional methods of risk-tradeoff analysis that take into account
all risks, whether they are of natural or human provenance (Wiener and
Graham 1995). To defend this view, one must show not only that harms
resulting from human activity are morally distinct from natural harms,
but also that the mere possibility of producing anthropogenic harm should
trump less-speculative and perhaps even more likely natural harms. Why,
from a moral perspective, should one treat the risk of anthropogenic harms
and natural harms differently when they are equivalent in terms of their
effects on human populations or the environment? Should societies not
expend the same resources guarding against a rogue asteroid impact as
they would in dealing with a rogue nuclear regime, assuming the risks
and magnitudes of nuclear fallout were identical? Perhaps the focus on
anthropogenic harm is based on the assumption that the consequences

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 Powell • What’s the Harm?

of human action are more within our control than those that flow from
natural events (Hourdequin 2007). Yet this is often not the case. For
one, there is good reason to think that many natural catastrophes, such
as preventable epidemics, are well within our epistemic and managerial
capabilities as a species; for another, history is a testament to the fact that
local human activities can have contingent and cascading consequences
that are beyond our ability to predict and control.
A more plausible defense of the precautionary approach is instrumental
rather than intrinsic. It contends that the natural living world is ordered
in such a way that adhering to the DES will tend to promote the things
that humans value. To make things simple, the focus will be on ends that
are morally uncontroversial, such as an interest in avoiding large-scale
human starvation or the disintegration of global ecosystems. Interpreted
in this way, the DES may take the following form: Actions that intervene
in the natural state of organisms or ecosystems will tend to do more harm
than omissions that simply leave things the way they are or allow them to
proceed as they otherwise would. This attitude could be grounded in the
induction that the probability of harm from human intervention exceeds
(on average) that which would have ensued in its absence. Although this
generalization alone might be enough to ground the DES, the Principle is
typically couched in terms of avoiding serious and irreversible harm—see,
e.g., the Rio Declaration above. Thus, one can say that the DES is war-
ranted insofar as serious and irreversible harm is more likely to flow from
the human modification of living systems than it is from the evolutionary
and ecological dynamics of living systems themselves.
Whether this generalization is true is an open empirical question.
At present, there are no long-run relative frequency data regarding the
probability of harms associated with the presence and absence of human
intervention, respectively; and any attempt to procure such data would be
confronted with severe methodological obstacles. Given our ignorance of
these respective frequencies, one might be inclined to assign equal prob-
abilities to each scenario.6 However, probability can be interpreted and
assessed in a different way, namely, by looking at the underlying physical
properties of a system and, in consultation with a well-supported empirical
theory, making predictions about its probabilistic propensities (Hacking
1990; Brandon 1995). For instance, one can make predictions about the
top speed of an automobile either by testing it in a series of trials, thereby
compiling a long-run relative frequency data set, or by examining its
integrated mechanical components. In the context of the DES, the key

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 kennedy institute of ethics journal • june 2010

question is this: Is there something inherent to the structure of organisms,

communities, and ecosystems such that human intervention, including
genetic or ecological modification, will tend to increase the probability
of harm beyond that which would exist in its absence?
In order to answer this question, one must examine the mechanisms
that generate and maintain order in biological systems. The DES and with
it the overarching precautionary approach could be justified if it were the
case that the products of evolution, including organisms and ecosystems,
(1) consisted of optimal equilibria that (2) tend to coincide with what
humans value, and (3) are complexly configured (causally opaque) and
highly sensitive to perturbation. I refer to this as the “benevolent balance
of nature” justification.

THE BENEVOLENT BALANCE OF NATURE IN LAW AND SCHOLARSHIP

Lest one think that the benevolent balance of nature is merely a playful
metaphor that is not actually employed in serious precautionary thinking,
consider that many domestic constitutions contemplate a positive right to
a natural ecological balance, or an environmental equilibrium that will
tend to be disrupted by human intervention. The right to an “ecologically
balanced environment” can be found in the constitutions and case law
of various nations in the Americas (Caillaux, Ruiz, and Lapena 2002)
and Europe (Nickel and Viola 2003). The Constitution of the Republic
of Philippines (1987, Article II, Section 16), for instance, holds that “The
state shall protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and
healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature.”
Moreover, the notion of a natural ecological balance has been invoked
specifically in the context of the precautionary approach. In a landmark
environmental ruling, the Costa Rican Constitutional Court invoked the
Principle and struck down a regulation permitting the harvesting of green
sea turtles, holding that it violated the right to an “ecologically balanced
environment” even though no threat to human health was implicated and
no scientific data was presented (Castro 2005). Invoking the precaution-
ary doctrine of in dubio, pro natura, the Court held that “the sole doubt
about the harm that could be caused to the ecologic equilibrium is enough
to protect it” (quoted in Castro 2005, p. 121).
The benevolent balance of nature idea is not limited in application to
ecosystems. It frames much of the precautionary discourse surrounding
the genetic modification of organisms as well. Here it is invoked not sim-
ply as an instructive metaphor, but as a powerful reason to constrain the

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development of and access to genetic technology. For example, the U.S.

President’s Council on Bioethics (2003, pp. 287–88) asserts:
The human body and mind, highly complex and delicately balanced as a
result of eons of gradual and exacting evolution, are almost certainly at risk
from any ill-considered attempt at “improvement.”

Even philosophers that are sympathetic to the genetic enhancement project

have compared would-be genetic interveners to children tinkering with
the finely tuned design of a master craftsman:
When an over-ambitious tinkerer with merely superficial understanding of
what he is doing [makes] changes to the design of a master craftsman, the
potential for damage is considerable and the chances of producing an . . .
improvement are small. (Bostrom and Sandberg 2009, p. 406)7

I will argue that this view of nature is perched on several conceptual pitfalls
that do not gel with contemporary evolutionary biology. In particular, I
examine and reject three interrelated ideas: (1) biological entities are opti-
mally engineered products of natural selection that (2) generally coincide
with what humans value and (3) are poised in a delicate balance of inter-
relationships that humans will tend to disrupt. Although my critique will
be widely appreciated by evolutionists, its implications are often glossed
over in debates over the ethics of biotechnology.
As I have argued more fully elsewhere (see Powell and Buchanan,
forthcoming), the notion that the natural living world has been placed in a
delicate balance over eons of precise evolutionary engineering is a seriously
flawed way of thinking about the nature of life on Earth. To demonstrate
this, I first discuss some of the constraints on organismic evolution that,
taken collectively, militate against a strong epistemic deference to the
products of Mother Nature. Second, I review a fundamental debate in
ecology regarding the nature of biotic communities and the evolutionary
mechanisms that govern them.

NATURE IS NOT A MASTER ENGINEER

If the engineering feats of the mechanisms of evolution exceed anything

humanity can expect to achieve or even understand, then we are reduced
to humility in the face of nature and her infinite wisdom. Mother Nature’s
proven success as a “master engineer,” so the argument goes, places the
burden of proof on those proposing to interfere with her handiwork.
One aim of the Principle, then, could be to discourage misguided (if well-

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intentioned) attempts to improve on the optimized products of natural

selection.
There are a number of reasons to reject the notion that nature is like
a master engineer. Perhaps the most obvious one is the sheer ubiquity of
inferior design in nature. Natural selection is usually invoked as the cause
of optimal organismic design, and for good reason given that selection is
the only known mechanism for producing biological function. Neverthe-
less, it is the imperfection and irrationality of biological design that is
among the strongest evidence for evolution by natural selection (see Gould
1978). Darwin often cited the cobbled and ad hoc construction of organ-
isms in the service of rebuking arguments for creationism. In a letter to
his friend and mentor Joseph Hooker, Darwin exclaimed “what a book a
Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and
horridly cruel works of nature” (quoted in Dawkins 2003, p. 8). What
is it about the character of biological evolution that causes sub-optimal
design to originate and be maintained in nature?
First, beyond a certain age, organisms contribute little to the gene pool
of the next generation. Thus with some rare and controversial exceptions,
natural selection tends not to act on the post-reproductive period of life,
since the latter has no effect on fitness. This simple truth has profound
implications for the master engineer analogy: For if natural selection is
the sole producer of biological optimality, then the vast majority of post-
reproductive traits, and thus a huge proportion of organismic traits, will
not benefit from evolution’s putative engineering genius. This is especially
important for long-lived organisms like human beings, whose lifespan
routinely extends well beyond reproductive age.
Second, even if the unfettered operation of natural selection eventually
would achieve an optimal solution to a given design problem, waiting for
nature to run its course may come at an unacceptably high moral cost.
In the wild, the origin and spread of beneficial mutations can take thou-
sands or even millions of years, depending on mutation rates, population
structure, and the type of the adaptation in question. It will also entail
the lamentable Malthusian scenario where there are far more births than
environmental resources can support. For instance, ancestral human popu-
lations had to sustain enormous death rates from small pox and bubonic
plague in order to achieve the fixation of pathogen-resistant genotypes.
The ultimate result of cumulative, incremental selection may be congenial,
but the process leading up to it is often nasty, brutish, and long.

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Third, the blind and incremental nature of natural selection not only
places severe constraints on how quickly natural selection can accomplish
a given adaptive feat, but also on which adaptive feats it can accomplish at
all. Mutation and recombination, which together provide the raw materials
for selection in sexual organisms, impose significant restrictions on what
selection has to work with and how it can do so. For example, consider
the scenario where a fitness-enhancing mutation is physically located on
a chromosome close to a maladaptive gene—a ubiquitous phenomenon
known as linkage disequilibrium. In such cases, the two genes will be
bound together in the recombinatory shuffle and, if the net gain in fitness
associated with the beneficial gene outweighs the net cost of being linked to
a deleterious gene, they will both enter the next generation notwithstand-
ing the latter’s detrimental effect on the phenotype. By the same token, if
the benefits do not outweigh the costs of linkage, then selection will not
favor—i.e., differentially produce—the fitness-enhancing gene. Selection
faces additional and often insurmountable hurdles when confronted with
a design problem that requires hundreds or even thousands of simultane-
ous mutations (or gene combinations) to solve. What is a relatively simple
task for a forward-looking engineer may be an astronomically improbable
feat for blind natural selection.

NATURE IS NONMORAL

Even if selection could overcome the aforementioned constraints, there

is no reason to believe that the resulting evolutionary outcomes would
tend to coincide with what humans value. Clearly we cannot hold that
something is valuable simply because it is a product of evolution, as this
would be to inject normativity into a mechanistic and non-moral process,
thereby committing the naturalistic fallacy (see Gould 1982). It is conceiv-
able, however, that even if value were not derived from the evolutionary
process, it might tend to coincide with it. Yet thereare weighty empirical
reasons to believe that evolution often produces outcomes that are dis-
cordant with human good.
As Julian Huxley pointed out, the products of natural selection are
“just as likely to be aesthetically, morally, or intellectually repulsive to us
as they are to be attractive” (quoted in Gould 1982, p. 43). Indeed, it is
the eminent brutality of nature that led Darwin to conclude that it could
not be the design of a benevolent creator. Although theologians have
wrestled with the concept of “natural evils” and their implication for the
existence of a benevolent God, there is an adequate scientific explanation

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for pervasive cruelty in the living world. The explanation is grounded in

the nature of biological fitness, a key component of the theory of natural
selection. Fitness refers to an organism’s propensity for differential survival
and reproduction, which is typically cashed out in terms of its expected
number of viable offspring. Selection is sensitive to an organism’s quality
of life only to the extent that the latter has some appreciable impact on
fitness. What is functionally or subjectively good for an organism may
or may not be conducive to its fitness, and vice versa. Moreover, what is
fitness enhancing for one organism may be highly destructive to others
with which it interacts strategically, such as a predator, prey, or competi-
tor. Therefore, countless traits are produced and maintained despite, and
in some cases because of, their dreadful effects on individual organisms.
When natural selection produces something that we value, or that we
disvalue, it does so out of sheer coincidence.

ORGANISMS AND ECOSYSTEMS ARE NOT DELICATELY BALANCED

Even if natural selection does not tend to produce optimal and benevo-
lent outcomes, is there any reason to think that organisms, communities,
and ecosystems persist in a delicate balance of interrelated functions,
such that they are especially vulnerable to (anthropogenic) perturbation?
Although the focus in this section will be on communities and ecosystems,
I will first consider the concept of balance as it applies to individual or-
ganisms.
Although the defining features of life are varied and controversial, one of
the more popular candidates is goal-directedness, or the ability to maintain
physiological, anatomical, or behavioral homeostasis across of wide range
of environmental perturbations (Nagel 1977). It is thus difficult to make
sense of the delicate balance theory as it applies to individual organisms,
since their functioning is by definition robust. Moreover, recent work in
molecular developmental biology has demonstrated a surprising degree
of “internal” tolerance to genetic perturbation, due to phenomena like
canalization, buffering, and dominance mechanisms (for a review, see
Wagner and Schwenk 2000). A more elaborate discussion of these mat-
ters is beyond the scope of this paper; suffice it to say that the trajectory
from genotype to phenotype is not nearly as brittle as it was once thought
to be.
Even if individual organisms are robust, it is nonetheless possible that
complex associations of individuals are governed by a different and more
volatile dynamic. Indeed, this has been the working assumption of many

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biologists operating under the equilibrium paradigm in ecology (King-

sland 1995). The view is nicely summarized by the preeminent biologist
and avid conservationist E. O. Wilson (2002, p. 39), who describes the
situation thus:
[T]he biosphere [is] a stupendously complex layer of living creatures whose
activities are locked together in precise but tenuous global cycles of energy
and transformed organic matter . . . When we alter the biosphere in any direc-
tion, we move the environment away from the delicate dance of biology.

The notion that ecosystems are perched in a precarious balance motivates

the precautionary principle in a number of environmental contexts. In
addition to the panoply of constitutional provisions regarding the right
to an ecologically balanced environment discussed above, laws designed
to manage risk in the context of invasive species also have relied on
ecological equilibrium theory. For example, according to the influential
Environmental Law Institute’s model state law on invasive species (2004
§3.03(c)), uncertainty regarding the effect of introducing a non-native
species “should be resolved in favor [of protecting the environment, and]
precautionary measures should be taken.” The idea is that where there is
uncertainty as to the effect of a species addition on endemic ecosystems
or biodiversity, it should be restricted or prohibited. Thus, the default
epistemic stance is not limited to individual organisms, as it is applied to
entire faunal assemblies as well (see Dickson and Cooney 2005).
The equilibrium paradigm in ecology has conceptual roots that trace
back to Platonic intuitions of macroscopic order in nature. In the view of
early naturalists, living things exhibited such a precise fit between form and
function that there was little doubt that they were intentionally designed
for their respective roles in the economy of nature. In the century follow-
ing Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species, however, ecology was
hard-pressed to swap the divinely inspired “balance of nature” metaphor
for one consistent with mechanistic evolutionary science. Selection-driven
concepts like competitive exclusion—the idea that no two species can oc-
cupy the same ecological niche in the same community indefinitely—have
since been invoked to explain ecological tendencies toward equilibrium,
such as why species tend to increase in number when they are sparsely
populated or why large predators are rare (Chase and Leibold 2003).
Echoing Plato, some early ecologists viewed ecosystems as so tightly
integrated that they constitute veritable super-organisms—homeostatic
individuals that can act as irreducible units of selection (Lovelock 1979).
The ecosystem-as-organism view, which is heavy on metaphor but light
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on scientific mechanism, has been subjected to devastating critiques by

prominent evolutionists from across the theoretical spectrum (Doolittle
1981; Gould 1997).
Metaphors aside, however, there are several ways to think about stabil-
ity in ecology. The first relates to constancy in the numbers of individuals
that comprise a population; the second describes the trophic structure of
highly interconnected food webs. As Kim Cuddington (2001) has pointed
out, when proponents of the balance of nature invoke the populational
notion of “equilibrium,” what they really mean is a stable attracting
equilibrium with a positive population density, since technically extinction
is also an equilibrium, and since equilibria can be unstable or oscillating
as well. If nature is stable in this demographic sense, then there must be
some mechanism responsible for this stability. Some authors have inferred
the existence of natural stabilizers from the fact that organisms do not
reproduce exponentially, as the null Malthusian hypothesis would predict.
Checks on exponential growth can be partially explained by wanton de-
struction wrought by the environment, but for the most part it is explained
ecologically—that is, by mechanisms regulating density dependence and
tropic structure, such as the competition for limited resources and the
“laws” of biogeography.
Nevertheless, even this simple populational version of equilibrium
is problematic (Hubbell 2001; 2005; Pimm 1991; Connell 1978). The
notion that the net rate of change in population density trends toward
zero, a core tenet of the equilibrium paradigm, has been consistently dis-
confirmed. Natural populations normally undergo large fluctuations in
density, even over relatively short spans of time. And in the long run, of
course, all species are driven to extinction. Furthermore, natural selection
often produces disequilibrium, as is the case for directional selection, or
multiple oscillating equilibriums, as occurs under balancing or frequency-
dependent selection. Although biologists had long assumed that strategic
interaction—such as that between predator and prey—ultimately would
lead to evolutionarily stable solutions, even simple dynamics have been
shown to produce violent oscillations that can lead to extinction (Beisner,
McCauley, and Wrona 1997).
Trophic versions of ecological equilibrium have proved equally diffi-
cult to demonstrate. The view that ecosystems represent delicate webs of
interdependent species hinges not only on the plausibility of the Eltonian
model of niche organization (Elton 1958), but also the competitive ex-
clusion theory of ecological evolution discussed previously (cf. Sterelny

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and Griffiths 1999). To the first point, the “lock-and-key” model of

niche theory has been criticized for assuming that niches are externally
imposed on organisms, when in fact organisms actively shape their place
in the economy of nature (Lewontin 1983). Equally problematic is the
central assumption of competitive exclusion theory that the resources
within a community are fully allocated. Not only is there little support
for fully packed niches (Reice 1994), but it is clear that trophic webs can
be maintained despite significant fluctuations in extinction, invasion,
migration, diversity, and energy pathways. Studies of both neontological
and paleontological communities suggest that invasions in general, and
anthropogenic additions in particular, tend to be fairly weak in terms of
their ecological impact, especially in the context of non-island invasions
(Valentine and Jablonski 1993). Moreover, the origination and extinction
of paleoecosystems is not coordinated in any way that indicates their
long-term evolutionary cohesion. Species tend to emerge, evolve, and go
extinct to the beat of their own evolutionary drum.
That being said, there are clear cases where invasions have precipitated
ecosystem collapse, and one needs to be especially wary of interfering
with communities that exhibit strong interaction strengths, low levels
of diversity, and minimal functional redundancy. This does not justify a
sweeping regulatory presumption, however. In addition, the foregoing
discussion assumes that communities and ecosystems can be properly
delineated, and that the concepts of equilibrium and disturbance can be
adequately defined; but this remains contentious philosophical territory
(Sterelny and Griffiths 1999; Pimm 1991).
Given the above difficulties associated with ecological balance theory,
it should come as no surprise that there is a major alternative, one which
is sometimes referred to as the “stochastic model” of ecological evolution.
In contrast to the adaptationist orientation of its competitor, the stochastic
model tends to view ecosystems not as law-governed, mutually reinforc-
ing associations, but rather as historically contingent, ephemeral, and
inherently dynamic conglomerations of species with overlapping ranges
and habitats (Hubbell 2001; Cooper 2001; Morris et al. 1995). On this
view, ecological drift rather than competitive exclusion is the predominant
mechanism driving the evolution of ecosystems (Mikkelson 2005). Stochas-
tic episodes of speciation, migration, extinction, climate change, tectonic
activity, and shifting sea levels all affect dispersal patterns and species
turnover, thereby shaping the structure and distribution of communities
(Valentine and Jablonski 1993). There is evidence that even in a static

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abiotic environment a population’s selective environment is constantly

deteriorating due to its strategic interaction with other lineages, the result
being that it must continually adapt merely to keep from going extinct.8
If this is correct, then in direct contrast to the predictions of ecological
balance theory, endemic biotic interactions will tend to undermine, rather
than reinforce, the stability of faunal associations.
Even if we grant that ecosystems are stable, is it the case that they are
complexly configured and highly sensitive to anthropogenic perturbation?
There is no doubt that major ecological disruptions, whether human-
initiated or not, will have a correspondingly major effect on ecosystems.
The real question is whether relatively small ecological disturbances will
tend to have unforeseeable and cascading consequences. The precautionary
approach to biodiversity could be justified if it turned out that ecosys-
tems were tightly interwoven networks of species, such that if a species
were added or removed, the whole system would be likely to unravel. To
the contrary, however, there is evidence to suggest that the more weakly
linked the components of a given community, the more diverse and stable
that community will be (McCann 2000; Kokkoris et al. 2002). Weak
trophic connections increase the number of species that can coexist, and
reduce the incidence of destabilizing biotic interactions (Dagg 2004). This
modular construction allows subassemblies to buffer the larger community
against small-scale environmental perturbations, including abiotic and
demographic changes (Sterelny 2001). Crucially, to the extent that an
ecological balance exists at all, it will depend on the absence of sensitive
interactions between species.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, I show that although the precautionary approach suffers

from a number of conceptual defects, it could nonetheless be justified in
a burden-shifting capacity in certain biological domains if it were the case
that evolution tended to produce optimal, delicately balanced equilibria
that generally coincided with what humans value. I argue that this idyllic
view is implausible, given everything that is known about the structure of
evolutionary and ecological theory. This does not preclude the possibility
that the Principle could be justified on other grounds, or that it could ap-
ply to different areas of concern, such as climate change or pollution. Of
course, no one is against being cautious when it comes to activities that
pose a serious threat to the biological world. My contention, however, is
that precaution as a principle does little to advance the sort of decision

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making that befits the causally untidy realm of biology, where timeless
laws yield to local contingencies, and folk intuitions give way to theory.

I am grateful to Tom Beauchamp, Allen Buchanan, Madison Powers, Robert Veatch, several
anonymous referees, and members of the Johns Hopkins Greenwall Seminar in Bioethics
for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

NOTES

1. For instance, Article 174 of the Treaty establishing the European Commu-
nity states: “Community policy on the environment shall aim at a high level
of protection taking into account the diversity of situations in the various
regions of the Community. It shall be based on the precautionary principle
and on the principles that preventive action should be taken. . . .”
2. One explanation for the asymmetry between the European and U.K./Ameri-
can approaches to precaution is that the latter traditions tend to rely heavily
on tort law in general, and the common law of nuisance in particular, as an
incentive for private restraint in the realm of the environment. Europeans, by
contrast, tend to place a greater share of social responsibility on regulatory
agencies. I am grateful to Ed Soule for this point. See also Noga Morag-Levine
(2008).
3. Moreover, as Sunstein (2005) points out, massive investment in risk avoid-
ance makes little sense in the context of extremely improbable and less than
catastrophic harms, since a society’s budget will be exhausted rapidly in
attempting to protect against all risk no matter how improbable.
4. Here I use the phrase “framing assumption” in the way that Buchanan (2008)
recently employed that locution. Namely, to refer to concepts that are tacitly
assumed rather than explicitly defended, and which channel the trajectory
of ethical deliberation and moral judgment.
5. In any case, many ethicists are skeptical that a stark moral distinction can be
drawn between action and omission in the first place (see, e.g., McMahan
2002; Lichtenberg 1982; Glover 1977). Although sociologically speaking
there is a clear tendency to view doing harm as morally worse than allowing
harm to occur (see Kamm 1996), these intuitions can usually be explained
by the presence of other morally significant variables, such as mental state,
which tend to coincide with the doing-allowing distinction (see Howard-
Snyder 2007). Advocates of the Principle rightfully may be concerned that
regulators politically beholden to corporate profiteers will tend to have
less than benevolent intentions in advocating on behalf of or loosening the
restrictions on a favored activity. But whether a proposed action is likely to

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cause harm is a distinct ontological question from the subjective motives or

mental states of the relevant agents.
6. According to the Principle of Indifference, if one is ignorant regarding the
probabilities of a set of mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive pos-
sibilities, then one should assign them equal probabilities. For a critique of
this principle, see Sober (2008).
7. This and the previous passage use adjectives like “ill-considered” and “over-
ambitious” (respectively) to describe the contemplated human intervention.
Of course, no one would defend a capricious attempt at genetic manipulation
any more than one would consent to being operated on by an incompetent
or inebriated brain surgeon. The authors’ arguments are only meaningful
if we ignore these adjectives, and hence I shall do so. I am grateful to Tom
Beauchamp for pointing this out.
8. This is often referred to as the “Red Queen” hypothesis. It was introduced
by Van Valen (1973) as an explanation of the Law of Extinction, which
holds that in an ecologically homogenous environment, the probability of
any lineage going extinct is statistically unrelated to its age.

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