Participants at the Wingspread meeting came from the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, and Sweden. From my perspective as a conservative Republican, this is a conservative principle. Participants noted that current policies such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis give the benefit of the doubt to new products and technologies, which may later prove harmful. And when damage occurs, victims and their advocates have the nearly-impossible task of proving that a particular product or activity was responsible. But the public must be fully involved.
Informed consent is just as essential.
When toxic chemicals enter our bodies or the bodies of our children without our informed consent, it is a toxic trespass. Such a trespass is wrong and almost everyone recognizes that it is wrong. A recent study by the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention concluded that only 2 percent of cancer deaths are caused by industrial toxins released into the environment. Steingraber points out that, if we accept such an estimate at face value, this 2 percent represents the painful deaths of nearly 11,000 individuals each year in the United States alone the annual equivalent of wiping out a small city, thirty funerals every day. And these deaths represent a form of homicide.