SCIENCE POLICY AND CANCER RISK ASSESSMENT

Many science pohcy controversies related to risk assessment focus on specific, narrow questions, such as whether to use animal or human data, the shape of the dose-response curve, how data on mechanism or mode of action should affect the risk assessment, and how to treat susceptible subpopulations. Many of these specific questions are discussed elsewhere in this volume. The analysis here, while touching on many of these specific questions as examples, will instead emphasize the broader structural and institutional aspects of how science policy issues affect risk assessment. These broader issues include  

Use of risk assessment in regulatory decision-making Role of risk assessment guidefines 

Cancer Risk Assessment, edited by Ching-Hung Hsu and Todd Stedeford Copyright 2010 John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

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CHAPTER 2 SCIENCE POLICY AND CANCER RISK ASSESSMENT... 

CANCER RISK ASSESSMENT, SCIENCE POLICY, AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORKS... 

Science policy issues and controversies underlie almost every aspect of cancer risk assessment. These policy issues are primarily a function of the scientific uncertainties inherent in risk assessment. As new scientific methods and data begin to fill in some of the data gaps and uncertainties in risk assessment, the role of policy will gradually recede, although there is no prospect of policy issues being mooted entirely in the foreseeable future. Moreover, the extent to which we substitute novel scientific data and models for preexisting policy inferences is itself an ongoing policy debate, as is the appropriate role of precaution and conservatism in risk assessment. 

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