Controlling Technology

“We Are Too Safe for Our Own Good” (Commentary, June 21), the attack on the “precautionary principle,” wrongly equates risk with danger. Risk implies that individuals can evaluate and choose courses of action. Danger describes our true state with regard to chemical uses in the environment or in agriculture--most of us will never have a choice about being exposed. These authors confuse the issue of precaution further by branding critics as anti-technological. Few people would ever call art critics anti-art. Why should technology be so sacred?

Torin Monahan

Chatsworth