Three Principles for Managing Risk in the Public Interest

We propose three principles and a general framework of reasoning for managing risk in the public interest. Principle 1. Risks shall be managed to maximize the total expected net benefit to society— The principle that the net benefit is to be maximized across society as a whole is argued to be a sufficient and rational guide to assessing the effectiveness of efforts directed at reducing risk and thus improving health and safety. The net benefit of an activity is the excess of the totality of benefits over the totality of detriments. Principle 2. The safety benefit to be promoted is life-expectancy— The goal is to ensure that risk mitigation efforts maximize the net benefit to society in the specific terms of length of life for all individuals. The effect of an activity on life expectancy is proposed as the proper basic measure of its net safety impact. Life expectancy is a universal measure valid for comparisons both within and among countries and can be adjusted to include health expectancy and other factors such as income levels that affect the quality of life. The impact on life expectancy allows a dispassionate accounting of the good and the bad inherent in any proposal or activity that is in the public interest but has some impact on life and health. Principle 3. Decisions for the public in regard to health and safety must be open and apply across the complete range of hazards to life and health— Systematic efforts to evaluate all the important consequences, both direct and indirect, are required to improve the basis for risk management in society. Balancing of the detriments and the benefits of any given initiative is the key aspect of the undertaking. Safety may well be an important objective in society, but it is not the only one. Thus, allocation of society's resources devoted to safety must be openly and continually appraised in light of other competing social needs because there is a limit on the resources that can be expended to save lives. Maximization of healthful life for all is judged the proper basis for managing risk in the public interest, and that this is achieved when the net of the contribution to the total saving of life exceeds the loss of life.