The most paranoid person I’ve ever come across is Carolyn Raffensperger, an environmentalist lawyer. I read an interview with her in this month’s edition of The Sun. This is saying something considering I used to work with a guy who once said, “People think I’m paranoid, but they’ll change their minds when the hot lead starts flying.” Raffensperger promotes an idea she calls “the precautionary principle.” She described it in the interview: “When you have scientific uncertainty and the likelihood of harm, you take preventive or precautionary action.” She contrasts it with what she takes to be society’s current view of safety, “which is all about measuring and managing risk.”
I’d like to ask her this: When, in the entire span of history, did uncertainty of any sort not exist?
Sure, we’d all like to eliminate uncertainty. We are a culture obsessed with security, and not knowing something drives us crazy. A media with a tendency to hype relatively small events-anthrax in the mail, West Nile Virus-doesn’t help.
However, a difference exists between concern and hysteria. The contrast between the two is rationality. In Raffensperger’s words, “measuring and managing risk.” Contrary to her, I think it’s the best way to make a decision.
Everything we do carries some measure of risk. Getting out of bed runs the risk you could slip, fall and crack your skull. It’s happened to people before. Of course, stay in bed and you could get bedsores. It may sound silly, but nursing homes get sued because patients get bedsores.
It’s easy to dismiss Raffensperger as an inconsequential Chicken Little. After all, this is a woman who thinks Henry Ford should have anticipated global warming and not developed the Model T. However, I’m surprised at the number of people I meet who share her mindset to varying degrees. Paranoia and even misguided concern can have, ironically, harmful consequences.
One of Raffensperger’s goals is to make sure a drug is completely safe for both humans and the environment before it is brought to market. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Now calculate the cost of making sure a drug is “completely safe.” A study to figure out the long-term side effects of a drug takes (surprise, surprise) a long time. People who need that drug in the meantime don’t get it. They suffer and/or die. So what do we do?
We make a rough estimate of cost (current lives) versus benefits (saving future lives). From there, a decision is made regarding how many studies should be done before the drug is considered reasonably safe.
This line of thinking is applicable to many issues. Complete security is nice to wish for, but it’s impossible. Security is an illusion. The world is an inherently risky place.
So, drive your car, but wear your seat belt. Scream and yell if you see someone carry a weapon on an airplane, but don’t let that unlikely event stop you from flying. Don’t stop eating at McDonalds because you’re afraid of poisoned beef. Instead, think about the millions of people every day who eat a Quarter Pounder and don’t have to get their stomach pumped.
As economist Kenneth Boulding said, “We must always be on the lookout for perverse dynamic processes which carry even good things to excess. It is precisely these excesses which become the most evil things in the world. The devil, after all, is a fallen angel.”
Wilson Boyd is a senior economics major.