Abstract

With the shift from the paradigm of curing to prevention in medicine individual health risks are seen as a major new issue. Especially with the availability of individualized risk information through genetic testing and increased knowledge about the influence of individual behavior on health there is a growing awareness for the risk of possible future illnesses in medicine. This paper takes the different notions of risk, that come together in a situation of risk information and shared decision making between doctor and patient, as a starting point for an in depth analysis of the different epistemic and semantic backgrounds that characterize the medical situation of risk information. So far theoretical or philosophical analyses on the concept of risk mainly focus on societal risks like climate change or financial crisis starting from sociological concepts like risk society. In this paper it will be assessed how far these approaches are helpful for a better understanding of risk in medicine; it will be taken into account the epistemic difference between knowledge of risk based on probabilities or uncertainty and causal knowledge.