Fundamental ethical responsibilities

What combating harm involves must, of course, be made explicit. The overarching ethical responsibility to combat harm can be unpacked into three Fundamental Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers (henceforth FEREs). 

Engineers employed by an organization or engaged by a client have an additional fundamental ethical responsibility ... 

David Parnas believed that, for technical reasons, SDI could never he known in advance to be trustworthy. He also believed that pursuing SDI would likely ignite a new arms race and thereby pose an increased risk to international security. Given these beliefs, the actions David Parnas took in connection with his membership on the SDIO Panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management mark him as a researcher whose engineering work was fully consistent with the fundamental ethical responsibilities of engineers. 

The Westway case illustrates that powerful political-economic pressures to proceed with a large-scale civil and environmental engineering project can induce technical professionals to engage in a range of deceptive practices that jeopardize public welfare and violate their fundamental ethical responsibilities. 

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