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Understanding the Risk of an Avian Flu Pandemic: Rational Waiting or Precautionary Failure?
Author(s) -
Basili Marcello,
Franzini Maurizio
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2006.00761.x
Subject(s) - precautionary principle , influenza a virus subtype h5n1 , outbreak , pandemic , economic shortage , risk analysis (engineering) , bird flu , actuarial science , disease , business , covid-19 , economics , operations research , medicine , infectious disease (medical specialty) , engineering , virology , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , virus , linguistics , philosophy , pathology , government (linguistics)
The precautionary principle (PP) has been proposed as the proper guide for the decision‐making criteria to be adopted in the face of the new catastrophic risks that have arisen in the last decades. This article puts forward a workable definition of the PP based on the so‐called α‐maximin expected utility approach, applying it to the possible outbreak of the avian flu disease among humans. Moreover, it shows how the shortage and/or lack of effective drugs against the infection of the virus A(H5N1) among humans can be considered a precautionary failure.