Evidentiary Procedures for Carcinogen Risk Assessment

美国社会已经采用和调整了科学技术，以实现对风险的社会控制。这些技术包含了许多潜在的巨大的不确定性。它们还服务于许多不同的社会目标————科学的准确性、社会的可接受性、及时作出决定的必要性、长期的一致性、对有关各方的公平性、保护公众健康和环境，等等————尽管大多数评论员只强调科学准确性的目的。法律制定了一些证据程序，以指导不确定情况下的决策，并为法律制度的许多社会目标服务。这个跨学科团队以法律的各个方面为模型，旨在设计致癌物质风险评估的证据规则，以帮助减少一些不确定性，更好地服务于风险评估的一些社会目标。这项研究涉及确定法律程序中使用的哪些证据规则可适用于致癌物风险评估，并审查采用这些规则可能对这些评估的社会目标产生的影响。在这一阶段，研究将侧重于服务于科学准确性和快速性的目标，这可能会冲突，并开发程序，可以服务于其他目标的风险评估和裁决冲突的目标和证据程序。研究结果将以报告形式并通过适当的学术和公共政策刊物传播。这种方法为风险评估提供了更广阔的视角。它认识到它所固有的大量不确定因素，提供了对付这些不确定因素的综合方法，并为思考这一进程提供了一些更广泛的选择。该项目涉及生物化学家/药理学家、统计学家、环境工程师、资源经济学家和法律哲学家之间的合作。这个话题很重要；研究团队，素质过硬；制度支持很好。结果可能是高质量和广泛传播的。因此建议提供支持。

U.S. society has adopted and adapted scientific techniques for purposes of social control of risk. These techniques incorporate numerous, and potentially large, uncertainties. They also serve numerous, different social goals--scientific accuracy, social acceptability, the need for timely decisions, consistency over time, fairness to the parties concerned, protection of public health and environments, etc.--although most commentators have emphasized only the aim of scientific accuracy. The law has developed a number of evidentiary procedures to guide decision making under uncertainty and to serve the many social goals a legal system has. Using aspects of the law as a model, this interdisciplinary team aims to design evidentiary rules for carcinogen risk assessment that can help to reduce some of the uncertainties and serve better some of the social goals of risk assessment. The research involves determining which evidentiary rules used in legal proceedings might be adapted for use in carcinogen risk assessments and examining the impact their adoption might have on the social goals of these assessments. During this phase, research will focus on serving the goals of scientific accuracy and expeditiousness, which may conflict, and on developing procedures that can serve other goals of risk assessment and adjudicate conflicting goals and evidentiary procedures. Results will be disseminated in presentations and via appropriate scholarly and public policy journals. This approach offers a broader perspective on risk assessment. It recognizes the substantial uncertainties inherent in it, provides a comprehensive way of coping with them and offers some wider alternatives for thinking about the process. This project involves a collaboration between a biochemist/pharmacologist, statistician, environmental engineer, resource economist and legal philosopher. The topic is very important; the research team, well qualified; institutional support is good. Results are likely to be of high quality and broadly disseminated. Support is therefore recommended.