Risk Assessment Tools in Decision Making
Article Review
Risk assessment is a tool especially used in decision-making by the scientific and regulatory community. In Making Good Decisions, Peter Montague discusses the use of risk assessment, points out its lack of usefulness in his opinion, and posits that the current use of risk assessment today is largely unethical. He states that "Risk Assessment is one way of making decisions, but it is not the only way, and it is not the best way." (Montague, date unknown, p.1) Decision making in itself carries a substantial amount of risk because decisions are made in a less-than-perfect world. One never has all the information possible (Harris, 1998) and every decision charts a course into an unknown future. However, there are times where the potential for injury to people, animals or the environment in that unknown future should be evaluated and be considered in the development of alternatives. It is particularly important in the determination of appropriate courses of action when introduction of new chemicals into an environment or population is being contemplated.
Montague uses the four-step process definition of risk assessment described by the National Academy of Sciences and then discusses how each step has failed to have an impact on ?good decisions.' In step 1, Hazard Identification, he states that toxic ?endpoints' such as cancers and reproductive toxicities "are simply ignored." He continues in step 2, Dose-Response Assessment, with discussion of the effects of dose size on risk. He implies that because there are many ways to estimate or extrapolate the data from lab animals to humans, it causes the results to be manipul ...