...And Grappling With Its Risks

Averting Catastrophe: Strategies for Regulating Risky Technologies. Joseph G. Morone and Edward J. Woodhouse. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986. 215 pp. $17.95 The year 1986, which began as we were still reeling from Bhopal, brought Chernobyl's reminder of the international potential of major technological accidents, Challenger's reminder of the fallibility of even the most sophisticated engineering management systems (and human hubris), Lake Nyos' reminder that nature itself is not benign, and the Mexico City earthquake's reminder that geophysical upsets can perturb technologies such as inadequately constructed buildings with disastrous consequences. Thus we hardly could be more sensitized to the question Morone and Woodhouse raise in their book: "Why, despite close calls, have risky civilian technologies produced no catastrophes in the United States? Have we simply been lucky—or is our good fortune at least partly the result of deliberate efforts to protect against these hazards?" The authors are social process-oriented. They confess: "At the outset of this research, we approached this subject with the commonly held assumption that the United States had botched the job of regulating risky technologies. Yet when we actually delved into how regulators have coped with the various risks, we discovered a surprisingly intelligent process." Five case studies on U.S. civilian technologies form the core of the analysis in Averting Catastrophe: toxic chemicals, nuclear reactors, recombinant DNA research, threats to the ozone layer and the atmospheric greenhouse problem. As the authors recognize, any book based on only a few cases will have its limitations. But it will offer specificity. The cases are presented evenhandedly and in straightforward language. General audiences will find them readable, and technical readers will benefit from being led through them in calm recollection. After working through the cases the book proposes a catastrophe-aversion system: (1) conservatively protect against the possible hazard; (2) reduce uncertainty through prioritized testing and monitoring; (3) revise the original precautions as uncertainty is reduced and more is learned about the nature of the risk. Absolutely correct. But bland. All of us who work on these matters must face the inherent difficulty in generalizing among and from disparate risk issues. Physical and social situations are diverse, as are perceptions, values, stakes, disciplines and institutions. Morone and Woodhouse's conclusions reflect extremely broad reaching. Their strategic proposals are more compelling: "Attack egregious risks—those clearly worse than others even after allowing for uncertainties; seek and employ alternatives that transcend or circumvent risks; develop carefully prioritized research strategies to reduce key uncertainties; be actively prepared to learn from error, rather than naively expecting to fully analyze risks in advance or passively waiting for feedback to emerge." The operational problem is how to embody these steps in practice. In real situations the issues are how to set those priorities; how, in detail, to deploy various analytic and protective measures; how to manage the affair as a sociotechnical system; and how to array personal and institutional incentives. The authors explore policies such as the safety goals established for nuclear power plants. But they could have gone further, and grist for doing so is in the cases. The deep structural problem beyond catastrophe aversion, is, as the book poses it, "How much safety should we purchase?" An immense background exists on this issue, and the discussion begun here relative to nuclear power could easily have been better developed. While the case studies are illuminating, the concluding sections are relatively unhelpful. The analysis overdefers to government regulation and it understates the power of existing risk controls. Basically the book concludes that we have muddled through most of these issues. In some ways, we have. But a lot more fundamental precautionary art is built into engineering practice, and a lot more toxicological judgment is built into chemical enterprise, than is acknowledged. All of us, including Morone and Woodhouse, need to keep going back to cases of the kind reviewed here to mine the lessons. Lowrance is director of the Life Sciences and Public Policy Program, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10021. He is the author of Modern Science and Human Values (Oxford University Press, 1986) and Of Acceptable Risk (William Kaufmann, 1976).

...And Grappling With Its Risks

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