My approach today will be to discuss risk and risk regulation in a general way. First, I want to discard some red herrings that seem to play far too great a role in the public's discussion of health risks: jobs and profits.

So long as regulation proceeds at a moderate pace, the likelihood of a devastating effect on jobs seems slight. Instead, risk regulation will cause a shift in jobs. Some enterprises will go out of business or have to cut back on production, involving a reduction in jobs, while others will appear or grow, creating more jobs. This sort of shift, of course, is similar to what technological innovation brings about. Just as we accept them in the context of technological innovation, the burdens seem acceptable so long as the regulation in question is acceptable on other grounds and the changes are not too abrupt.