Chapter 8 examines regulatory rules, beginning with an examination of written rules. It underlines the inescapability of interpretive uncertainty and considers ways in which that uncertainty can be addressed, including varying the precision of rules, how they are specified, the publication of interpretive ‘guidance’ (sometimes called ‘soft law’) and the delegation of detailed standard-setting to ‘technical experts’.

The intellectual historian John Pocock once observed that with the rise of commercialization, the status of citizens was no longer seen as a function of their actions and their virtues but came to be constructed in juridical terms, in terms of rights and of ownership of things. He posits an opposition between virtue (part of a political way of life) and rights (part of a commercial way of life) that was eventually bridged with the help of the social notion of manners – and this might help explain why we associate the virtue of prudence with a certain kind of prudishness.

This chapter considers basic concepts in ethics, ethical decision making and risk perception in relation to health promotion. It discusses the relation of ethics to morals and law, and presents a range of ethical perspectives and decision-making shortcuts applicable in health promotion, before considering how risk perception is important in health and risk-related communication. The chapter discusses examples of codes of ethics in the health promotion industry, noting that these need to be flexible, transparent and reflective.

Working with human remains raises a host of ethical issues. This chapter explores whether there is a universal ethical approach to human remains or whether this idea is so general as to be little more than a broad statement. The chapter also provides a more general introduction to ethics. It is essential to have a good understanding of what this discipline actually means if curators and researchers are to act in truly ethical ways. In the literature discussing human remains there are only a few examples where general ethical principles are addressed. Most gloss over this aspect as if this understanding is a given. It is not. Many people, both involved in working with remains or not, have at best a sketchy understanding of ethics, yet we as academics and museum professionals are expected to draw up ethical codes and statements, which if they are to be more than a box-ticking exercise must be based on a firm understanding of the issues.