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The Precautionary Principle is a guide to coping with scientific uncertainties in the assessment and management of risks. In recent years, it has moved to the forefront of debates in policy and applied ethics, becoming a key normative tool in policy discussions in such diverse areas as medical and scientific research, health and safety regulation, environmental regulation, product development, international trade, and even judicial review. The principle has attracted critics who claim that it is fundamentally incoherent, too vague to guide policy, and makes demands that are logically and scientifically impossible. In this paper we will answer these criticisms by formulating guidelines for its application that ensure its coherence as a useful normative guide in applied and policy ethics debates. We will also provide analyses of cases that demonstrate how our version of the principle functions in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of the precautionary principle (PP) in transforming the French regulatory landscape for genetically modified organisms used in food and agriculture over the last decade. Despite few explicit references to the PP, we argue that it has been instrumental. The changes do not result from a linear top-down process, as in the application of a new law. Instead, the PP has acted as a point of articulation for debates in different public arenas; through these debates, the PP has been progressively translated into pragmatic practices. New boundaries have been drawn between risk assessment and risk management practices. This has facilitated the progressive emergence of a distinct arena of scientific expertise and opens the possibility for the reciprocal emancipation of public decision and scientific expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]