title: Understanding the risk of an avian flu pandemic: rational waiting or precautionary failure?
abstract: The precautionary principle (PP) has been proposed as the proper guide for the decision-making criteria to be adopted in the face of the new catastrophic risks that have arisen in the last decades. This article puts forward a workable definition of the PP based on the so-called alpha-maximin expected utility approach, applying it to the possible outbreak of the avian flu disease among humans. Moreover, it shows how the shortage and/or lack of effective drugs against the infection of the virus A(H5N1) among humans can be considered a precautionary failure.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Economia Politica, Facoltà di Economia R. Goodwin, Università di Siena, Piazza San Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy. basili@unisi.it
authors.forename: Marcello
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Basili
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Franzini
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds; D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D003657:Decision Making; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004782:Environmental Health; D006801:Humans; D053124:Influenza A Virus, H5N1 Subtype / Q000378:metabolism; D005585:Influenza in Birds / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011050:Policy Making; D011634:Public Health; D012306:Risk; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods*