Description
The identified lives effect describes the fact that people demonstrate a stronger inclination to assist persons and groups identified as at high risk of great harm than those who will or already suffer similar harm, but endure unidentified. As a result of this effect, we allocate resources reactively rather than proactively, prioritizing treatment over prevention. For example, during the August 2010 gold mine cave-in in Chile, where ten to twenty million dollars was spent by the Chilean government to rescue the 33 miners trapped underground. Rather than address the many, more cost effective mine safety measures that should have been implemented, the Chilean government and international donors concentrated efforts in large-scale missions that concerned only the specific group. Such bias as illustrated through this incident raises practical and ethical questions that extend to almost every aspect of human life and politics.What can social and cognitive sciences teach us about the origin and triggers of the effect? Philosophically and ethically, is the effect a "bias" to be eliminated or is it morally justified? What implications does the effect have for health care, law, the environment and other practice domains?This volume is the first to take an interdisciplinary approach toward answering this issue of identified versus statistical lives by considering a variety of perspectives from psychology, public health, law, ethics, and public policy.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsContributorsI. Glenn Cohen, Norman Daniels, and Nir Eyal, Statistical versus Identified Persons: An IntroductionPart I: Social ScienceChapter 1Deborah A. Small, On the Psychology of the Identifiable Victim EffectChapter 2Peter Railton, "Dual-Process" Models of the Mind and the "Statistical Victim Effect"Part II: Ethics and Political PhilosophyChapter 3Dan W. Brock, Identified vs. Statistical Lives: Some Introductory Issues and ArgumentsChapter 4Matthew Adler, Welfarism, Equity, and the Choice Between Statistical and Identified VictimsChapter 5Michael Otsuka, Risking Life and Limb: How to Discount Harms by Their ImprobabilityChapter 6Nir Eyal, Concentrated Risk, the Coventry Blitz, Chamberlain's CancerChapter 7Norman Daniels, Can There Be Moral Force to Favoring an Identified over a Statistical Life?Chapter 8Caspar Hare, Statistical People and Counterfactual IndeterminacyChapter 9Marcel Verweij, How (Not) to Argue for the Rule of Rescue: Claims of Individuals versus Group SolidarityChapter 10Michael Slote, Why Not Empathy?Part III: ApplicationsChapter 11I. Glenn Cohen, Identified versus Statistical Lives in U.S. Civil Litigation: Of Standing, Ripeness, and Class ActionsChapter 12Lisa Heinzerling, Statistical Lives in Environmental LawChapter 13Johann Frick, Treatment versus Prevention in the Fight against HIV/AIDS and the Problem of Identified versus Statistical LivesChapter 14Till Bärnighausen and Max Essex, From Biology to Policy: Ethical and Economic Issues in HIV Treatment-as-PreventionChapter 15Jonathan Wolff, Testing, Treating, and Trusting
