www.mddus.com


removing or mitigating harms that occur • Provide benefits to society


• Seek a favourable and acceptable balance of risk of harm and potential for benefit


• Respect autonomy by allowing individual astronauts to make voluntary decisions regarding participation in proposed missions


• Ensure fair processes and provide equality of opportunity for mission participation and crew selection


• Recognise fidelity and the individual sacrifices made for the benefit of society, as well as honour societal obligations in return, by offering healthcare and protection for astronauts during missions and over the course of their lifetimes.


The chairman of the committee who produced this report,


Jeffrey Kahn, said: “Astronauts put their lives and health at great risk for their country and humankind. Our report builds on NASA’s work and confirms the ethical imperative to protect astronauts’ health, while fulfilling the agency’s mission of exploration.”


Understanding risks Space travel, of course, is not the first mode of transportation which has raised health concerns. Doctors at one time warned that another form of rapid transit, if constructed, “would cause the greatest deterioration in the health of the public, because such rapid movement would cause brain trouble among travellers, and vertigo among those who looked at [those] moving”. No, not space rockets but trains – this according to the Bavarian Royal College of Doctors in the 19th century. Similarly, the Professor of


Natural Philosophy and Astronomy from UCL dismissed the prospect of the railway, arguing that “travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” The coming of the railways, and the reckless speeds that could be attained, frightened people and allowed so-called experts to make fools of themselves with equal ease. Space travel has been no different and continues to excite health and safety concerns to this day. No one is arguing that space travel is completely safe and nor


should they, but perhaps that is not the point. Surely, human endeavour and all that it entails is not about the avoidance of hazards but rather about understanding the risks involved so that adventurers, explorers and those who have blazed every trail that has ever been marked out – in this case astronauts – can make informed choices about whether to accept them. “NASA,” one commentator has noted, “has to decide whether


it’s really OK to ask someone to take those risks.” However, the question is not whether NASA should ask; but how prospective astronauts should answer. Astronauts are autonomous adults, competent to make meaningful decisions on their own behalf, which they will be able to do when furnished with all the information available. Because we are operating at the edges of what is known, that information will always be incomplete. But this is the nature of adventure and it is that very sense of stepping into the unknown that is the incentive for many would-be astronauts to don a space-suit in the first place.


Sources • www.nasa.gov


• Health Standards for Long-Duration and Exploration Spaceflight: Ethics Principles, Responsibilities and Decision Frameworkwww.nap.edu/catalog. php?record_id=18576


• www.space.com


Dr Allan Gaw is a writer and educator from Glasgow


– but what are the ethical considerations in sending humans out into space? ADVENTURE


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