Every day, we are faced with making decisions about what to do and what not to do: Should I smoke?  Should I eat saturated fat?  Should I eat more fish to decrease my risk of heart disease or avoid it to decrease my risk of cancer? Should I drive or fly home for break? How much is it worth to me for the government to regulate the dioxins emitted from paper mills? How do the risks of nuclear power, of climate change from burning fossil fuels, of disruption of global fisheries from hydroelectric power or of global contamination by exotic metals in solar panels compare to each other? Should we provide inexpensive refrigeration and thereby increase the supply of food and medicines in tropical nations or force such nations to buy more expensive refrigerants to protect the earth's ozone layer?  This class will explore many of the scientific#and other#questions that surround such decisions. To what extent must such decisions be left to individuals' intuition? To their ethics? How has the pace of change impacted the value of traditional wisdom? How are we to balance individual decisions with government policies?  Readings will be drawn from:  Readings In Risk; Should We Risk It? Exploring Environmental. Health and Technological Problem Solving; Risk vs Risk: Tradeoffs in Protecting Health and the Environment; But Is it True? A Citizens Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues; Phantom Risk: Scientific Inference and The Law;  What Risk: Science, Politics and Public Health.  The class will be enhanced by visits from health care professionals, government regulators and those affected by regulations.  Students will be evaluated on class participation and on two papers. In one paper, students will reflect on how they personally balance different criteria for making decisions and why they value their balance more than others. The second paper will explore the risks and regulations of some current topic such as those mentioned above.

Level:  Intermediate.  Prerequisites:  An open mind and a 'non-fear' of learning some basic statistics.