A Broad Framework for Confronting Health Risks

Abstract

Throughout our lives we face a myriad risks to our health: fire, asbestos, barracudas, radon, earthquakes, nuclear reactors, automobiles, cholesterol, hepatitis … Con-fronting all these threats is an ongoing personal agenda, both in the short term, as we plot how to cross the street or decide what to eat, and in the longer term, as we try to stave off bodily deterioration or catastrophe. Confronting them also is a core humanitarian concern and a central collective societal agenda, as we try to protect one another and seek fair distribution of risk burdens. The challenge always, of course, is to balance risks against benefits.