Generic Policx Issues 29 



particular project in one column, totaled its anticipated 

 economic return (translated into monetary terms) in an- 

 other column, and compared the two. The method was 

 first used in the public sector by the Army Corps of 

 Engineers in planning and justifying water projects during 

 the 1930s/ Costs, in addition to those of construction, 

 included, for example, losses to people whose land would 

 be flooded. Benefits, in addition to hydroelectric power 

 and increased irrigation capacity, included the creation of 

 recreational facilities. 



Many of the methodological problems involved in car- 

 rying out and interpreting such relatively narrow cost- 

 benefit calculations have been studied by economists for 

 many years, and most are now generally resolved. 

 However, problems that are not completely methodologi- 

 cal arise in trying to extend cost-benefit calculations to 

 weigh intangibles whose monetary value is not easily 

 established, as is the case with many important risks. One 

 can, for example, compare anticipated monetary losses to 

 the fishing industry in the Northeast due to acid rain to the 

 costs involved in reducing industrial emissions that are the 

 cause of acid rain. But it is far more difficult and. to some, 

 morally repugnant to place a dollar value on serious 

 injuries to human beings or on the loss of human life 

 (NRC-Obs.; AAAS-5).'^ 



Quantitative comparisons of risks and benefits also 

 carry a burden of uncertainty in cases where both the risks 

 and the benefits are anticipated in the future and. there- 

 fore, are more difficult to assess. At the extreme, those 

 comparisons may involve risks and benefits to distant 

 future generations who are likely to live under different 

 circumstances and who may therefore also weigh risks 

 and benefits differently than we do now (NRC-Obs.). 

 Nuclear waste disposal represents the classical future 

 generation problem (See Section II-E). 



Finally, the risks and the benefits of a specific technol- 

 ogy may not fall on the same groups in the present genera- 

 tion. The risks and costs of a synthetic fuels industry, for 

 example, will fall most heavily on coal miners and on the 

 population of Western States in the forms of environmen- 

 tal damage and loss of water for agriculture. On the other 



hand, heavily populated regions in other parts of the 

 country could benefit greatly from the availability of syn- 

 thetic fuels. 



All of these uncertainties underline the fact that assess- 

 ments of the risks, costs, and benefits of technological 

 developments, and the policy decisions to be based on 

 them, necessarily involve value judgments that cannot, 

 therefore, be reduced entirely to scientific terms. 

 However, formal analytical tools such as cost-benefit anal- 

 ysis can be of powerful assistance in displaying the likely 

 consequences of different policies and in indicating which 

 residual uncertainties can be reduced by better scientific 

 information or analysis (ASTR-II). 



If. as it seems likely, the science and technology enter- 

 prise will be called upon to a greater degree in the future to 

 contribute its best possible insights about risks and their 

 regulation to decisionmakers and policymakers, then the 

 analytical tools for extrapolating assessments of hazards 

 into the future, for weighing risks and benefits, and for 

 determining public attitudes about various classes of risks 

 will need to be refined, both to improve their usefulness to 

 policymakers and to clarify their limits." In seeking that 

 refinement it should be emphasized again that significant 

 risks, by their nature, are frequently associated with tech- 

 nologies, processes, or products that also carry significant 

 anticipated benefits. Likewise, while the risks inherent in 

 a particular product or process can be eliminated by 

 selecting a very different alternative, that alternative will 

 carry with it risks and benefits that may be of a different 

 nature. Risks and benefits associated with the use of coal 

 and nuclear fission provide important examples. Thus, 

 analyses are needed not just for comparing the significant 

 risks and benefits associated with particular products and 

 processes, but also for comparing risks and benefits of 

 entire classes of products and processes. Such large-scale 

 assessments necessarily involve a broad spectrum of dis- 

 ciplinary expertise and institutional perspectives. There- 

 fore, both the quality and the usefulness of such analyses 

 might be improved by increasing the breadth of expertise 

 within specific disciplines and developing multidisciplin- 

 ary methods of analysis (AAAS-1; AAAS-5). 



REFERENCES 



1. National Science Foundation. The Five-Year Outlook: Prohlenu. 

 Opportunities and Constraints in Science and Technology. Washington. 

 D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, May 1980. See Volume I, pp. 

 31-33; Volume II. pp. 123-144 and 493-520. 



2. "Federal Regulation," Executive Order #12291. February 17, 

 1981. 



3. Ibid. 



4. Michael S. Baram. Re i>ulation if Health, Safety, and Environmen- 



tal Quality and the Use of Cost-Benefit Analysis. Report to the Admin- 

 istrative Conference of the United States (unpublished). March 1979. See 

 pp. 1-8. 



5. Ibid. Despite these obvious problems, a number of regulatory 

 agencies do place monetary values on human life for the purpose of 

 making cost-benefit calculations. 



6. National Science Foundation, op. cit. (Ref. I). See. for example, 

 Dorothy Nelkin. "Science, Technology and the Democratic Process," 

 Volume II. pp. 483-492. 



