[pf] Risks, imposed or chosen

by David MacClement

16 December 2000 19:02 UTC

At 08:01 16/12/2000 -0800, David Appell wrote:
>... "safe" is of course a relative term. Here, ... is a food story ...
>http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001215/sc/disease_cargill_dc_2.html
>
>An estimated 2,500 cases of Listeria [which] ranks among 
>the most deadly, with 92 percent of those infected requiring 
>hospitalization and 20 percent dying, according to CDC estimates.
>

· For /many/ years I have wondered at the risks people are willing to take,
in using the roads. I use that to guide my opinions on risk-taking.

· There seem to me to be several factors.
(1) The risk is visible, known-about. You see road-kill, perhaps have
personal experience or know someone who has been injured or killed. 
(2) The risk is quantifiable; you hear the numbers of deaths during special
travel-seasons or during the year. If you look into it, you can find out
which circumstances are the more risky, and by how much.
(3) You know the benefit; you yourself have made use of many of the
benefits, and understand the economic benefits of road transport of people
and goods.
(4) You, individually, have options available to reduce the risk. You can
be careful as a pedestrian; you can drive defensively; you can choose how
often and where to expose yourself to the risk.
   (I walk, these days, at least partly because I can easily not-use the
carriageway - sealed surface - in contrast to when I cycled. The risk was
definitely greater on a bicycle, and the benefit - of speedier arrival -
wasn't worth the increase in risk, in my circumstances.)

· So there's a frequent risk-benefit assessment going on; you're able to
take charge of this aspect of your own life. People are willing to take
such large risks when they choose it for themselves.

· In contrast, other risks, already-known-about or potential (like
food-poisoning or eating certain kinds of genetically modified food), are
out of our hands. They IMO are being imposed on us without our knowledge
and certainly without our consent, as if we were non-entities or
experimental animals.

· That article: "Link Sought Between Four Deaths And Tainted Turkey" (about
Cargill Turkey Products recalling 16.7 million pounds of its ready-to-eat
poultry products produced in Waco, Texas), shows that manufacturers (of
food, tires, cars etc.) - the organisations which benefit from people's use
of their product or service - recognise this out-of-control aspect: /they/
control the person's exposure to whatever risks there are, rather than the
individual. So the beneficiaries (the companies), to save their activities
from being seen as "bad" (and possibly made illegal), take what most will
see as all reasonable steps to restore the situation to what it was before
they increased the risk to the general public.

· What I've said is I believe un-exceptionable. However, the next stage of
the argument is not so commonly agreed. 
· What if only part of the risk is known about? What of "unknown risks"?

· This is where caution is the ancient human response, as it should be now.

· These days, that means accepting the Precautionary Principle; see David
Appell's Scientific American article (he give the URL in:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2000/msg06167.html  ).

· My interpretation of how it applies in these circumstances is that those
who are pushing for a change which will benefit them, are the ones who have
to prove what the risks actually are, to the people who have to take that
risk.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
· This next bit is not really part of the above; I've made the main point.
  Besides "unknown risk", there's at least one other dimension: degree vs.
probability.
· For most people, the degree of risk in using the roads is small: the high
risk is of only injury, with a much lower risk of death (I'm talking of all
road-users). Whereas the probability of collision is quite high.
· For use of an airliner, the degree is quite high (death for hundreds of
people), but the probability is low.
· For use of more than one "small" nuclear weapon (a terrorist act), the
degree is catastrophic, totally unacceptable, while the probability was
very low indeed during the "Cold War", and much lower still now (though
non-zero).
· I think there is some kind of mathematical product of degree and
probability, by which people make such choices. At the beginning of the
second world war, British politicians did this sort of balancing act. They
knew of the high risk of catastrophic damage that would result from going
to war, with a fairly low probability that they and following generations
/would/ have a better life afterward, while the other choice, putting up
with Nazi control of most of Europe plus the risk of invasion of Britain,
would have lower risk of damage but the probability was virtually 1 (one),
a certainty. Of course there were other factors; considering risks in not
the whole story.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

· I hope you don't get distracted from my main point: _who_ is responsible
for risk taking, especially when the risks are unknown or not well known.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
*************************************************