ブックタイトルRILAS 早稲田大学総合人文科学研究センター研究誌

概要

RILAS 早稲田大学総合人文科学研究センター研究誌

American Beef and Nuclear Power Plants: Risk Management of Complex Technological Systems and the Precautionary PrincipleFigure 1: candlelight demonstrators marching through the center of Seoulinformation about American imported beef, and initiateda very complicated negotiation process regardingthe immunologically, pathologically, and epidemiologically“dangerous”parts of the slaughtered animal,the situation would have worsened as people’s outragewas fueled by the provided information, leading to theinvention of more absurd stories. Government officialstended to believe (or perhaps wished to believe) that ifthey told the public a sweet spell of safety, peoplewould let them do their job without bothering them toaccount for all the complexities of the case.They could not have been more wrong on this. Inhindsight, it is rather strange that they did not realizethe possibility of a serious backlash against theirpatronizing attitude towards the public. There havebeen many cases in Europe and in the US wherein thepublic was not easily persuaded to a scientific viewpointwhen presented with numerous facts aboutscience (for example, when people believed that theearth was orbiting the sun). ? However, That may betrue of some well-established facts such as the oneabout the position of Sun in the solar system. In thecase of BSE, although we do know the basic mechanismof its infectious path, we do not know manyrelevant facts about the disease, let alone any stablemethod to eliminate the risk of getting the disease byeating potentially contaminated beef. The facts thatcould be used to placate the public do not exist. Therefore,government officials tried to wave a magic wandto suppress real concerns.To be fair, it is true that we should not alarm ourselvesover every possible risk. If we did, we wouldhave to stop doing anything at all. Even an appropriatemeasure taken against one particular risk may producedifferent, unintended risks. For instance, setting up animpeccable national security system could jeopardizecivil liberties. Therefore, we have to evaluate ouroptions carefully before making any decisions in ourrisk-governance. ?In order to thoroughly evaluate our options, wehave to be informed as much as possible, as correctlyas possible. Guaranteed access to objective informationabout relevant scientific consensus is the firstcondition for productive scientific communication.When there is no definite consensus on the issue, allavailable information should be made accessible to thepublic so that people can deliberate on their optionsand choose wisely among them.In the case of the American beef crisis, there wasa failure to provide relevant and reliable informationas well as a lack of substantial relevant facts. Althoughscientific research about the prion mechanism is stillnot complete, scientific experts on prion and BSE hadaccumulated reliable enough knowledge to refute mostof the safety claims made by government officials andtheir scientists. ? In this sense, there was a failure toprovide relevant scientific facts to the public, andmass media’s commitment to present both sides of anissue equally did not improve the situation, since thesafety claims were presented as though they were onequal scientific footing with the risk claims. ?On the other hand, there was intrinsic uncertaintyas well. First, uncertainty derives from institutionalvagueness; that is, who may be considered an“expert”111