Review by Choice Review
This brief but thought-provoking volume synthesizes Bates's views and experience on how biomedical knowledge impacts social policy decisions in the area of public health. Examples such as air pollution, cigarette smoking, asbestos, lead, radiation, and electromagnetic fields are described to indicate how increases in scientific knowledge were incorporated into both regulatory and legislative solutions. Two opposing trends are noted: increasing information almost always shows that current regulations are not protective enough and that society has traditionally erred on the side of under caution, yet legislation increasingly interferes with the ability of regulatory agencies to do their job and creates a less protective framework. Bates explodes the myth that strong regulation is antithetical to economic progress, showing that countries with the strongest regulations usually have the soundest industrial economies. He cautions that even scientific information can be corrupted, mentioning that the renowned statistician R.A. Fisher, who 40 years ago questioned the early statistical link between smoking and lung cancer, was paid by the tobacco industry. Of the many valuable facts in this slim volume, the demonstration of how to calculate attributable risk in the case of smoking and asbestos vis-`a-vis lung cancer is one of the clearest. General; undergraduate through faculty; professional. M. Gochfeld; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
