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Session IV: Does the Law Tend to Favor Identified over Statistical People?

384 views · Published 1 May 2012 · 1:37:46 · Indexed 8 November 2026

Channel: Harvard University · 2012 · Education

7th Annual Program in Ethics and Health Conference

Session Chair: I. Glenn Cohen, J.D.
Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, Harvard Law School

Matthew D. Adler, J.D.
Leon Meltzer Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Lisa Heinzerling, J.D.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Wendy Parmet, J.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law

I. Glenn Cohen, J.D.
Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, Harvard Law School

This conference focuses on how decision makers and the public tend to feel more strongly obligated to assist "identified" people at risk than to assist "statistical" ones, and the implications for public policy. To illustrate, when a group of Chilean miners were stranded following a 2010 mine accident, the rescue mission garnered worldwide support and millions of dollars, but the public had not felt a similar need to invest in mine safety measures that would have saved more statistical lives. What factors trigger or explain this difference in attitude and behavior? How is it manifested when we think about global health problems, such as treatment and prevention (and "treatment as prevention") for HIV/AIDS? Does the law express such bias? Is there any ethical justification for this bias, for example, as a matter of obligation toward each and every individual? Is it, alternatively, a moral error, rooted in well-known cognitive biases?

Session IV: Does the Law Tend to Favor Identified over Statistical People?

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