Policy decisions

The money used in a project must be returned by the project with interest whether it comes from debt or equity. The recent swings in the cost of money have brought to everyone s attention the complexity of setting return and interest rates for feasibility studies. If a project is ready to be built and the loans have been negotiated, the interest rate can be determined accurately. Establishing the interest rate for a feasibility study on a project that will not be built for one or more years in the future is difficult and becomes a policy decision that should be set by management. The same rate should be used on all studies to keep the yardstick the same length. 

These and other FDA policy decisions launched the pharmaceutical industry and academia into a new era of developing stereoselective processes for the manufacture of enantiopure active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). 

These policy decisions by the FDA were the driving force for chiral switches and the commercial development of chromatographic processes such as simulated moving bed (SMB) technology. Due to technological advances such as SMB and the commercial availability of CSPs in bulk quantities for process-scale purification of enantiopure drugs, the production of many single enantiomers now exists on a commercial scale. 

Consider, as an example, the logic of a policy decision to build and locate an electric generating plant or oil refinery. Economic considerations such as the availability of ample and inexpensive land, and social considerations such as zoning regulations and political influence, would play a major role m such a decision. In practice, this makes it more likely that plants and refineries, as well as waste sites and other locally undesirable land uses, will be located in poorer communities whose population is often largely people of color. 

The solution may be a policy decision, but this decision will be assisted by the results of the internal layout configurations, which may indicate how simply or otherwise expansion can be accommodated. 

The guidance obtainable from break-even charts is limited and should be used only with other criteria in formulating decisions. The effects of policy decisions may alter the data used and vitiate or amend the results disclosed. 

For some mental health problems such as severe dementia, effectiveness might actually be achieved by slowing down a deteriorative trend or accelerating an upward trend. This makes effectiveness difficult to assess without a control or comparison group, or a set of norms, and emphasizes why naturalistic studies alone are rarely sufficient as an evidence base for clinical or policy decisions. 

Policy makers would benefit from a combination of strong field evidence of trends and well-established models to draw upon when assessing the benefits of past or future policy decisions. Models of mercury cycling and bioaccumulation are not yet adequately predictive across a range of conditions and landscapes. Results from a national mercury monitoring program, if carefully designed, offer the potential to... 

Decision Analysis. An alternative to making assumptions that select single estimates and suppress uncertainties is to use decision analysis methods, which make the uncertainties explicit in risk assessment and risk evaluation. Judgmental probabilities can be used to characterize uncertainties in the dose response relationship, the extent of human exposure, and the economic costs associated with control policies. Decision analysis provides a conceptual framework to separate the questions of information, what will happen as a consequence of control policy choice, from value judgments on how much conservatism is appropriate in decisions involving human health. 

Education of the Legislators and Regulators. From one participant "The analytical chemist is asked to make a measurement level of a compound in the environment. He provides that to another professional, such as an industrial toxicologist, who then has to interpret that result, make certain policy decisions on it, and explain it to the public. And yet the implications of the initial question are that the analytical chemist has a contribution to make if he is aware of that initial question. I am impressed in the manner in which the dialogue is carried out in the public. .. in an atmosphere of total informational blackout. The implications of the data that the analytical chemist really possesses is not brought into the dialogue."... 

This use of animal evidence is based, in part, upon its scientific standing, but it is also based upon a science policy decision - it is one of the defaults present in the risk assessment process. Even in the absence of specific knowledge that the response detected in a toxicology study is relevant to humans, it will be assumed to be so -unless other data arrive to demonstrate that it is not relevant to humans (see below what is meant by other data ). Regulators and public health policies generally call for action even when the evidence regarding adverse health effects does not rise to the level necessary to establish causation in humans. 

The policy decision to act before science is certain does not, of course, dissolve the scientific uncertainties. Indeed, a strong argument can be made that an assessment of the type we have described should not pretend to represent normal science. Many of its outcomes are untestable with current methods this alone might disqualify it as a true science. 

In the final analysis, the purpose of measurement is to provide numerical values as the basis both for making policy decisions and for enforcing regulations. It is critical, therefore, to know whether measurement data are reliable. It is also essential that all the data be intercomparable. 

Except for interviewees employed at historically white colleges and universities, most interviewees were more satisfied with their influence on departmental rather than institutional policies. Industrial chemists expressed the lowest level of satisfaction in their ability to influence either institutional or departmental policies. One Cohort I interviewee from an historically black college explained that a simple departmental policy decision changed the dynamics of student/faculty interaction ... 

In terms of informed policy decision, it would be desirable to relate information to both the input and to the output. However, working with secondary data implies that many studies do not provide complete information. In most cases, though, data on an environmental indicator is only available on the input, the per unit of land area basis. Although in scientific terms it is deplorable that most information is not available on a per unit of output basis, this is less problematic for today s practical EU policy. Food surpluses are more of a problem in the current political environment than food scarcity and there seems to be a broad consensus to keep the amount of farmland relatively stable. Therefore, in the EU, in most cases, the policy relevant way is to apply the data on environmental indicators to the input on a the per unit of land area term. 

This question assumes a policy decision of no change in the total agricultural land area and of an increasing proportion of organic farming (Table 5-1). This, of course, implies a decrease in food produetion but for certain reasons this is not important for the persons asking this question, e.g. due to surplus production. 

The food security proponent s questions supposes a policy decision of an increase in the organically farmed land area with a total food production fixed to the today s level (Table 5-1). The assumption that food quantity might become short in the EU sounds a bit exaggerated at times when surpluses are prevalent. It might be relevant in the future when food in the EU could possibly become scarce. 

In a letter to Science in 1980 (O, U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-MICH) stated with respect to the debate concerning the subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feeds "The science of this issue is well in hand, but we cannot call upon it to do the impossible. Twenty years of scientific investigation have identified but not quantified the risk to human health. We now face a fork in the road where prudent policy decision and not further study will be the pathfinder."... 

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