The Return of Lombroso? Ethical Aspects of (Visions of) Preventive Forensic Screening

Munthe, Christian; Radovic, Susanna

The idea of some or one of these approaches to be actually embarked on may appear more or less likely (or far-fetched), depending both on the applied time perspective and how much of current medical ethical standards are taken for granted. It should, however, be noted that neither of the versions presuppose that the scientific and technical problems mentioned earlier have been 'overcome' in any simple sense. Already the question of what would count as such overcoming is, as mentioned, impregnated with ethical issues-not least the very complex issue of what is required of 'good evidence' for some action in response to a serious problem and how much that problem should be allowed to continue, before waiting for further evidence becomes irresponsible (Munthe, 2011) . Moreover, a variety of factors may make practitioners, policymakers and people in general perceive some Lombrosian strategy as promising or even ripe for implementation in spite of weak evidence. As we have seen from the quotations above, already the current scientific expertise in the field expresses strong temptations to this effect despite noting the frailty of the evidence base. This suggests a risk of enthusiasm overshadowing otherwise powerful objections that is far from unprecedented from a historical point of view. It is also easy to imagine the temptation for policymakers (as well as the general public) to reach for the sort of 'easy solutions' to loaded, complex societal problems held out by the Lombrosian vision and also here history teaches us that this may occur regardless of the actual scientific basis, besides veiling ethical complications. Thus, current standard opinions, e.g. that prenatal screening targeting some alleged criminality gene is out of the question, may change just as quickly as past eugenic stances once transformed into the more liberal views that currently prevail in this area of medicine. There is also a particular structural and institutional pull of screening solutions, due to the economic and status benefits for organizations of heading such programmes, that has been highlighted in the health context (Juth and Munthe, 2012 : 2) and which seems no less likely in the new Lombrosian case. To the extent that a society is thus lured into setting up programmes of this sort despite wanting evidence, this will, of course, add to the ethical complications to be presented in the following sections.