Where an intervention's benefit is uncertain and its harm is not, prefer inaction.
From the Hippocratic ethical tradition, though the Latin maxim itself is documented only in the nineteenth century. Its force is asymmetric: it applies where benefit is uncertain and harm is not, and does not license inaction where both are known.
In practice
- A surgeon declines an operation whose benefit is unproven and whose complication rate is known, and gives the patient that reason.
- It does not license inaction where both are known, which is why "first do no harm" is a poor argument against a treatment with an established benefit.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Risk & Reliability
- Essay
- How much caution, and the jokes about its limits