The Avian Flu Disease: A Case of Precautionary Failure

Abstract-The Precautionary Principle has been proposed as the proper behaviour to adopt in the face of the new catastrophic risks that have made their appearance in the last decades. We advance a workable definition of the Precautionary Principle and apply it to the possible outbreak among humans of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Marcello Basili, Maurizio Franzini
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.488.2556
http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/quaderni/454.pdf
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Summary:Abstract-The Precautionary Principle has been proposed as the proper behaviour to adopt in the face of the new catastrophic risks that have made their appearance in the last decades. We advance a workable definition of the Precautionary Principle and apply it to the possible outbreak among humans of the avian flu disease. We make use of a Principle-Agent model and show in which sense such outbreak can be considered a “Precautionary failure”.