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Review Of "The Future Of Life," By Edward O. Wilson, Bryan Erickson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "It is refreshing to read an environmental diatribe where the writer has both the authority of a world expert and a willingness to compromise to pursue realistic solutions. Wilson is a Harvard biology professor, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and a director of the Nature Conservancy. In The Future of Life, he presents a succinct evaluation of the great ecological issues of our day, focusing on the rapid pace of species extinctions, and on the promise of finding a balance between conservation and human activity that will bring the extinctions to a halt."

An Overview Of Progress In The International Regulation Of The Pharmaceutical Industry, Joan Costa-Font, Aaron Burakoff Harvard University; University Of Barcelona

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The pharmaceutical industry, a significant source of healthcare throughout the world, has several features that distinguish it from the rest of the health industry. In the last half-century, new technology, better technological know-how, and overall economic growth have led to widespread and rapid growth in the pharmaceutical sector. Advancements in pharmaceutical research and development have led to the production of drugs that can routinely combat afflictions that, only years ago, were untreatable or even fatal. Since 1970, the average share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on pharmaceutical goods has increased in most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) …

Historical Development Of The Linear Nonthreshold Dose-Response Model As Applied To Radiation, Ronald L. Kathren

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Despite the nearly universal adoption of the linear nonthreshold dose response model (LNT) as the primary basis for radiation protection standards for the past half century, the LNT remains highly controversial and a contentious topic of discussion among health physicists, radiation biologists, and other radiological scientists. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the LNT has assumed the status of a paradigm, synonymous with an ideal, standard, or paragon or perhaps to some, a sacred cow. Reduced to its very basics, the LNT postulates that every increment of ionizing radiation dose, however small, carries with it a commensurate increase …

Review Of "The Health Of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, And Their Effects On National Security And Development," By Andrew T. Price-Smith, Andrew Mierins

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Andrew T. Price-Smith, author of The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development, provides a well documented and reasoned analysis of the need for world leaders, including the United States, to place the threat of infectious disease on the front burner of consideration when shaping both national and international policy. Professor Price-Smith has provided both empirical data and historical analysis to support the impassioned plea for this natural threat to be taken seriously. The book is geared toward the academic community and policy analysts; however, other professionals not involved in these …

Reply To Dr. Tengs’ Response, Lisa Heinzerling

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "The primary aim of my article “Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions and Their Misuse in the Debate Over Regulatory Reform” was to dispel the myth that had grown up around the studies Dr. Tammy Tengs published with Dr. John Graham: that is, the idea that government regulation is responsible for, in Dr. Graham’s words, the “statistical murder” of 60,000 people in the United States every year. As I demonstrated in my article, nothing in the work of Drs. Tengs and Graham supports Dr. Graham’s recurring charge of statistical murder through regulation. And nothing in Dr. Tengs’ response to my article casts …

Table Of Contents, Volume 1, Numbers 1 & 2, 2002, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

This is a special Issue on radiation effects, and this volume continues the work of the journal "RISK: Health, Safety & Environment."

Masthead, Volume 1, Numbers 1 & 2, 2002, Editorial Board

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Masthead for Volume One.

Preface, Volume 1, Numbers 1 & 2, 2002, Jaime Ackerman, Elizabeth Hochberg

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Pierce Law Review. You may notice that a number of the articles in this edition are not typical for a law review. This is because the articles in this edition were held over from our predecessor publication, a scientific journal entitled RISK: Health, Safety & Environment. As a result. the articles in this volume are rather atypical for a traditional law review. and not all of them entirely legally-related in nature. Nonetheless, we hope you enjoy having the opportunity to read articles on topics you would not have reviewed otherwise.

Introduction To Special Issue On Radiation Effects, P. Andrew Karam

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "How dangerous is radiation? How much radiation does it take to give us cancer? Are we wasting money on overly restrictive regulations, or are we not being sufficiently protective of our radiation workers and the public? How much clean-up is necessary on our Department of Energy facilities? What about Yucca Mountain and nuclear reactor plants – can they be made safe?

These are only a few of the questions that have been asked, and will continue to be asked, about radiation. Unfortunately, these all come down, in part or in whole, to the question “What is the shape of …

Effects Of The Shape Of The Radiation Dose-Response Curve On Public Acceptance Of Radiation And Nuclear Energy, Audeen W. Fentiman

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The public generally accepts the premise that exposure to radiation can have an undesirable effect. Furthermore, it believes that as the radiation dose increases, the magnitude of the effect will increase. On the other hand, while the background radiation dose varies from a few hundred millirem/year (a few millisieverts/yr) in some places to a few thousand millirem/yr (tens of millisieverts/yr) in others, researchers have been unable to find a correlation between the level of background radiation and incidence of cancer or other maladies attributable to radiation.

…

Because there is considerable controversy about the relationship between radiation dose and …

The Debate On The Health Effects Attributable To Low Radiation Exposure, Abel J. Gonzalez

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Few scientific issues have aroused passions more than the dispute about the health effects attributable to low levels of exposure to ionizing radiation (or radiation in short) and the currently authoritative dose response hypothesis, termed “linear non-threshold,” or LNT. Finding out whether health effects are induced by low-level radiation exposures, and if so, what they are, has become a kind of contest rather than a serious scientific inquiry. Sometimes it seems that rationality, or a methodical examination of the unknown, has disappeared from this debate. While the confrontation of different hypotheses is typical in academic discussions – at least …

Public Perceptions Of Food Safety: Assessing The Risks Posed By Genetic Modification, Irradiation, Pesticides, Microbiological Contamination And High Fat/High Calorie Foods, Michael D. Mehta

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "In general, people in the developed world have access to a safe and varied supply of food. Instead of systemic hunger, many developed countries have problems with obesity and other kinds of eating disorders among their citizenry. It is within this context that some find public concerns about the safety of food both paradoxical and misplaced. Nevertheless, understanding how people perceive the risk associated with food is an important exercise in demonstrating accountability and in setting priorities for regulation. With the advent of technologies for producing genetically modified foods, and the development of fat blockers like Olestra, the public …

A Method For Modeling Low-Probability, High- Consequence Risk Events: Vessel Traffic On The Lower Mississippi River, George Wooddell, Robert Gramling, Craig J. Forsyth

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "A variety of commodities, from chlorine to corn and petroleum to passengers, are transported on the lower Mississippi River regularly. Corn, wheat and coal are the most commonly carried commodities. From a human health and safety perspective, these are relatively benign products in that a vessel accident and spill of these are not directly hazardous to people, whatever other ecological disturbances may ensue. However, over eighty million tons of petroleum products are transported on the river annually. Over a million tons of liquid natural gas traverse the river through the center of New Orleans. Additionally, over 400,000 tons of …

A Response To Lisa Heinzerling's Article “Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions And Their Misuse In The Debate Over Regulatory Reform”, Tammy O. Tengs

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "I am writing in response to Lisa Heinzerling's article “Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions and Their Misuse in the Debate Over Regulatory Reform,”1 published in the Spring 2002 issue of Risk: Health, Safety & Environment. Dr. Heinzerling comments on two papers that my colleagues and I, affiliated with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, produced as part of research funded by the National Science Foundation over a decade ago. The first is the article “Five-Hundred Lifesaving Interventions and Their Cost-Effectiveness,” published in the journal Risk Analysis in 1995. In this article we described the cost per year of lives saved of …

Review Of "The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, And Public Policy (Basic Bioethics)," Edited By Suzanne Holland, Karen Lebacqz, And Laurie Zoloth, James Steele

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "Perhaps like others, I started "The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate" not knowing many of the finer points of embryonic stem cell research, but I certainly had an opinion. This issue is far more complex than I had initially imagined. The editors do a commendable effort of compiling a sample of the innumerable arguments surrounding the debate."