When trying to classify harm situations in our world, there is a thin and fragile line between negligence and unintended harm. It starts as a unavoidable weakness of the knowledge apparatus - I mean, the impossibility to be 100% sure of a finding - and then this uncertainty spreads to all the stakeholders and their decisions.
There are several cases of this problem, but let's concentrate in the astonishing article in November 25th edition of the NYT, which is based in a paper from Harvard School of Public Health (the paper is available here). According to the researchers, due to South Africa government disagreement on the causal relation between HIV and AIDS, and thus the decision to not use antiretrovirals, 3.8 million person-years were lost from 2000 to 2005. The calculation includes both the lives lost and babies born with the disease. The reporter goes further and explores the political background and motivations behind such decision.
If right, was such decision negligence or unintended harm? Anyway, it is a sad example of how the traditional apparatus to safeguard citizens could fail to act and, hopefully, fruitful ground to re-shape the systems available to confront this century challenges to security.