More than 100 policymakers, academics, educators and activists met last week at a symposium sponsored by the University of Michigan\u2019s Risk Science Center, in the United States, to take a broad look at understanding risk and sustainability in the fast-paced world of emerging technologies. In the end, the participants turned again and again to the question of education and engagement, discussing how people want information and whether or not they want to make their own decisions, or do they just want to be told a product is \u201csafe\u201d. Hilary Sutcliffe, a symposium participant and the director of MATTER, a United Kingdom-based organization that specializes in public outreach, said, if there is one thing the past has taught us, it\u2019s that \u201cwe will get it all wrong.\u201d The American system, for its part, is mostly set up to prevent dangerous products from coming onto the market, via a lengthy pre-approval process \u2013 but such methods take time and technology is moving ever faster. Peter Preuss, the chief innovation officer in the office of the assistant administrator for research and development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said, \u201cI don\u2019t think we can deal with these types of problems with the system of governance that we have today. The pace of innovation is now six months … I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a governance structure that can deal with that.\u201d Wisconsin law professor R. Alta Charo said she worries more about the public\u2019s attitude, which she describes as anti-intellectual and anti-science. When it comes to understanding new technologies, the public has to delegate some authority to experts, but they don\u2019t want to, she said. Sutcliffe added that while people want to be involved, they don\u2019t want have to dig too deeply into the details of every new drug or food product. \u201cGo to them where they are and talk to them in their language, rather than having them talk to us in our language and come to us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.newhavenindependent.org\/index.php\/archives\/entry\/educating_auntie_vera\/id_40477<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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