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Thomas Schlich and Ulrich Tröhler (eds), The risks of medical innovation: risk perception and assessment in historical context, Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Abingdon and New York, Routledge, 2006, pp. xv, 291, illus., £80.00 (hardback 0-415-33481-0).
The footnotes to this book make interesting historical reading. Most of the references to innovation are to works from the early 1990s and most of the references to studies of risk are to books and articles that appeared quite recently. Innovation studies probably came out of concern with interest in new technologies and how they were validated; interest in risk possibly comes from evidence based medicine. There is a huge body of work by experts on risk. In recent years, however, a rich alternative literature has grown up discussing the ways in which risk has become restricted to a technical term or defined only scientifically and thus excludes concerns about safety and danger expressed by ordinary citizens. These issues are helpfully touched on by the authors in their introduction, which is much...