Virtue ethics
It is well known that early applications of radiation resulted in severe injuries
to the exposed personnel. Examples are: Use of X-rays and use of radium
compounds for painting the watch dials. Such effects are now known as
deterministic effects of radiation exposure. For radiological protection, under
such situations, the control was to reduce the dose levels to the individuals to
prevent such deterministic effects. Virtue ethics is concerned with the actions
for complete well-being of a person, and a person-based decision to act and
provide guidance to prevent severe health effects in all such radiation exposure
situations.
Utilitarian approach to ethics
In this approach, the consequences of a given radiation exposure is
assessed. Action which produces the maximum benefits over harms for everyone
affected or exposed is accepted as the morally right course of action. All the
available options and the general balance of short-term and long-term benefit
over the harm to all persons are considered. This is the justification process
based on cost-benefit analysis. Dose limits, based on stochastic considerations
provide the upper-bounds for optimization.
Duty-based or
Deontological ethics
Duty-based (Deontological) ethics are concerned with what people
do and not with the consequences of their actions. People have a duty to do the
right thing or take right decision even if it produces consequences which may
not be acceptable to all. The Duty-based
ethical systems expects due regard to be given to even to small group of
persons even if the actions are at odds with the interests of a larger group. Dose
constraints/risk constraints are considered for optimization of protection.
The current recommendations of the ICRP emphasize more duty-based ethics,
giving more importance to the control of individual doses than to the
collective dose and cost-benefit analysis. Exposure to individuals is
controlled by the use of dose/risk constraints on multiple sources of exposure.
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