ABSTRACT
Cancer Battles and the Sleep of Reason is an inquiry into the role of scientific experts in environmental health policy-making. This chapter establishes two propositions: that there is no necessary relationship between science and environmental health policy; and that risk assessment is no. the only science of environmental health. A mode of grading experts is provided in Environmental Cancer—A Political Disease? by S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman. There are usually in-house resources enough to draft hazard assessment procedures and risk assessment protocols. But policymakers will usually want advice from sources outside the government, example at the committee stage of legislation. One central question addressed by L&R is to identify and describe "an expert consensus on cancer causation". It will be axiomatic that this consensus will provide the rationale for public health measures aimed at the causes of cancer and thus their consequences in society.
