Risk vs. Risk: Tradeoffs in Protecting Health and the Environment

We see the stories in the newspaper nearly every day: a drug hailed as a breakthrough treatment turns out to cause harmful side effects; controls implemented to reduce air pollution are shown to generate hazardous solid waste; bans on dangerous chemicals result in the introduction of even more risky substitutes. Could our efforts to protect our health and the environment actually be making things worse? In Risk versus Risk, John D. Graham, Jonathan Baert Wiener, and their colleagues at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis marshal an impressive set of case studies which demonstrate that all too often our nation's campaign to reduce risks to our health and the environment is at war with itself.

John Graham is Professor of Policy and Decision Sciences and Director, Center for Risk Analysis, Harvard School of Public Health.

Jonathan Baert Wiener is Perkins Professor of Law, Professor of Environmental Policy & Public Policy Studies in the School of Law and the School of Environment, Duke University. He is also Director of the JD-LLM Program in International & Comparative Law, and Faculty Committee Chair, of the Nicholas Institute.

Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard and the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. He is the author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide, Nudge (with Richard Thaler), Law and Leviathan (with Adrian Vermeule), How to Interpret the Constitution, On Freedom, and Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America. He is a recipient of the Holberg Prize, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for the humanities and social sciences.