ABSTRACT
The judicial system has increasingly dismissed the consumer's ability to assess risk and willingness to bear it, and simultaneously denigrated producers' willingness to sell whatever level of safety and health that may be demanded. For most of recorded history, both assessment and choice chiefly have been the prerogative of the individual; society and its institutions—have exhibited great faith in the ability of individuals to regulate the risks of their personal environments through the appropriate choice of contractual relationships. The contrast between individual hazard rates and population death frequencies is even more striking in the case of cigarette smoking. The uncertainty inherent in the process of risk assessment reinforces rather than obviates the need for individual resource owners to be the final arbiters of the risk assessment and decision-making process. There is simply no other way to choose the experts, nor any way to weigh their findings.
