ABSTRACT
Cancer has become one of the most controversial issues of our time. In such a climate, where charges and countercharges over cause and responsibility are as numerous as the credentials of the adversaries, anxiety becomes almost rational. In 1971, the primary cancer lobby was the biomedical research establishment. In 1981, there was a different set of political-economic interests mobilized, attempting to define the nature of the cancer problem and shape the direction of public policy. The application of risk-benefit analysis to regulatory decisions would require a thorough discussion of its history and methodology. America was made great by an entrepreneurial spirit based on risk-taking; and now a public living in morbid fear of cancer and other hazards threatens progress itself. In the mid-1970s, sectors of the corporate world, along with government officials and the academic policy sciences, turned their attention to the growing problem of medical-care costs.
