The longer I serve as editor of Perspectives, the fewer ideas I have for issues and the more I rely on readers' suggestions. This issue began with such a suggestion.

I must admit that initially I did not think it a very good suggestion. Too broad. Too obvious. How can one think about ethics without thinking about risk? What is life if not risk?

Yet, everyone I asked thought risk would make a good issue. As one colleague put it, "Risk is hot:"

Still, the topic was too broad. So, I asked "risk experts" that is, people who had written about risk how I might narrow the topic. I soon began hearing about risk assessment. All professionals take risks. Hardly anyone objects so long as the risks are within acceptable limits. But how do we decide whether a certain risk is within acceptable limits. The first step is assessing the risk.

Suppose, for example, that you are an economist asked to advise Congress on legislation limiting the use of carbon based fuels. If you knew that burning such fuels at the present rate would so heat the surface of the planet that life would end in two centuries, you would have little difficulty endorsing any necessary legislation, however burdensome. If, on the other hand, you knew that burning carbon-based fuel even at much higher rates than now would do little harm to life here, you would probably not endorse any sacrifice at all.

Today, however, climatologists and meteorologists are divided on the probable climatic consequences of burning carbon-based fuels. They don't agree that global temperature has changed as a result, how much it will change, when it will change, or what effect any change will have on global climate or human society. So, you must make your recommendation in a sea of uncertainty. And any recommendation, even "Do nothing" or "Further study," is risky. (Time might be working against us.) Where should you begin? What place does ethics have in such dark waters? That is our subject.

Mary Gibson's piece is adapted from an entry in the Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by Lawrence Becker and soon to be published by Garland (and published here with their kind permission). Gibson, a philosopher, sets the stage for the pieces to follow. Her second sentence identifies a "normative judgment" implicit in every judgment of risk. Risk is a complex of fact and value; risk assessment, as much an assigning of value as a weighing of facts. Both consent and justice have a part in determining acceptable risk.

Kristin Shrader-Frechette, another philosopher, then offers a critique of the way risk is commonly assessed." Risk-benefit analysis" rests on the same egoism, hedonism, and utilitarianism as most other forms of economic analysis. It systematically ignores costs to third parties, natural resources, and public goods morality requires us to take into account. Shrader-Frechette concludes by recommending that we find ways to supplement risk-benefit analysis to compensate for these economic deficiencies.

Alan Neff, a lawyer teaching at IIT's business school, dissents in part from Shrader-Frechette's critique. Risk assessment normally takes into account more than Shrader-Frechette thinks, including costs to third parties, natural resources, and public goods. For Neff, the risk in risk assessment lies elsewhere. Risk assessment is more art than science. The assumptions of a particular assessment are not "deductive" (that is, the product of a science). They are instead an expression of the assessor's judgment, her sense of what should count. The assessment is only as good as the assumptions on which it rests. They deserve careful examination.

Our last piece (by Edwin Levy) may seem out of place here. The subject is not economic risk assessment but when as experimental drug should be released for use by people who will probably die without it. Indeed, the piece never mentions economic assessment. It is, nonetheless, plainly concerned with identifying risks a conventional cost-benefit analysis might omit. Here is risk assessment both Shrader-Frechette and Neff can applaud.

Interestingly, Levy, who once taught philosophy at the University of British Columbia, is today Manager of Regulatory Affairs at a private corporation. Part of his job is getting regulatory approval for a new cancer treatment called "photodynamic therapy." His argument here clearly grew out of very practical concerns.