This book brings together a collection of Roger Bate's articles, which have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Economic Affairs, and the Sunday Times during the past five years. His writing focuses on five key themes--usually unmentioned in other articles about risk:
Hazards are as likely to come from natural as from man-made substances.
The linear no-threshold hypothesis is rubbish (i.e. the dose makes the poison)
An entire industry has developed to scare us into stopping certain activities, or making us feel guilty for continuing them, or lobbying to have them banned by government.
The public are quite capable of making decisions that involve complex trade-offs if only we would let them; indeed, not letting them causes enormous problems as government bodies do not have the dispersed knowledge to do this, and are subject to interest group pressure.
There are innumerable benefits, as well as costs, from risk taking.
