# 29. Ethics of Intervention

## When changing a system changes people

**Status:** Outline for future development  
**Primary fields:** Field, Arc, Lattice, Repair  
**Primary scale:** participant, household, institution, community, and public system

### Purpose

Set ethical boundaries for observation, design, testing, environmental intervention, health-adjacent claims, cultural borrowing, commercialization, and automated action.

### Central question

> Who has the authority to change this system, who bears the risk, who can refuse, and who gets to define success?

## Proposed sections

1. **Consent is more than permission** — comprehension, voluntariness, ongoing choice, and withdrawal.
2. **Privacy and intimate data** — bodily, emotional, environmental, location, and relational information.
3. **Risk proportionality** — reversibility, vulnerability, uncertainty, exposure, and potential scale of harm.
4. **Therapeutic overclaiming** — the boundary between education, wellness, treatment, diagnosis, and cure.
5. **Cultural knowledge and appropriation** — attribution, authority, living traditions, and extractive synthesis.
6. **Commercialization and conflict** — incentives, testimonials, product claims, sponsorship, and disclosure.
7. **Automation and authorization** — who may act, what must remain human-controlled, and how to stop safely.
8. **Environmental justice** — unequal exposure, access, repair, and the right to a healthy place.
9. **Public communication** — uncertainty, correction, harm reduction, and responsible promotion.

## Five-Foci sketch

- **Phase:** consent over time, intervention windows, review points, and withdrawal.
- **Field:** power, law, culture, resources, vulnerability, and institutional context.
- **Arc:** invitation, agreement, intervention, adverse event, refusal, repair, and accountability.
- **Form:** protocol, policy, product, claim, record, and precedent.
- **Lattice:** participant, researcher, maker, funder, regulator, community, and affected nonparticipants.

## Practice

For one proposed intervention, write a one-page ethics card: purpose, affected parties, benefits, risks, unknowns, alternatives, consent process, stop condition, data retention, compensation, and remedy if harm occurs.

## Evidence boundary

Good intentions do not establish safety. Consent does not excuse preventable risk, and a compelling personal result does not authorize a population-level claim. Ethical review is part of the method, not an administrative step after the interesting work.

## Open questions

- How should consent work when a shared environment changes for people who were not present?
- What duties arise when a hypothesis becomes a commercial product?
- How do we credit sources without implying endorsement?
- What would repair look like after a failed or harmful intervention?

## Development sources

Research ethics, informed consent, disability justice, environmental justice, Indigenous data sovereignty, responsible innovation, medical advertising rules, and the existing Workbook evidence card.