Are we too risk averse, and what impact might this have upon biomedicine?

Citation

(2005), "Are we too risk averse, and what impact might this have upon biomedicine?", Nutrition & Food Science, Vol. 35 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/nfs.2005.01735bab.005

Are we too risk averse, and what impact might this have upon biomedicine?

Are we too risk averse, and what impact might this have upon biomedicine?

This is the question posed by the new spiked/Wellcome Trust online debate "Fearing the unknown", the first in a series of debates running over the next two years.

Two papers have been published to initiate the debate:

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  Helene Guldberg, managing editor of spiked, argues that "fear of the’unknown has become one of the major barriers to social, scientific and’technological advance". http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA376.htm

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  Alan Irwin, professor of sociology at Brunel University, argues that "rather than representing citizens as risk-averse, we should be engaging more with what people want from technical change". http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA375.htm