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CONCENTRATED BENEFIT over DIFFUSE INJURY

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Appendix M CONCENTRATED BENEFIT over DIFFUSE INJURY by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., and Egan O'Connor, November 1993 The law of Concentrated Benefit over Diffuse Injury can be stated as follows: A small, determined group, working energetically for its own narrow interests, can almost always impose an injustice upon a vastly larger group, provided that the larger group believes that the injury is "hypothetical," or distant-in-the-future, or real-but-small relative to the real-and-large cost of preventing it. 1 The Surprising Aspect of This Law Many scholars have written about this extremely important axiom before -- it is not original with us. The fact that narrow special interests are always at work for their own benefit at the expense of others is not at all surprising, given human nature. And it is not surprising that the beneficiaries select what appears to be the strategy of least cost to themselves. The surprising aspect is the failure of so many victims -- especially in peaceful democracies -- to appreciate the aggregate consequences which inevitably accrue, when each small injustice has such a high chance of prevailing. 2 The Real Scope of the Injury We regard Concentrated Benefit as the most harmful law of all humanity. Is this correct? The terrible feature of this law is that each incremental injustice has a very high chance of prevailing. So, even when new injuries or injustices truly are small, the aggregate abuse can accumulate to tragic proportions after the axiom of Concentrated Benefit has operated on behalf of various narrow interests again ... and again ... and again. We often wonder at the vast abuse which the general public has failed to prevent: Tyrannies, wars, genocides, mass starvations, proliferation of nuclear weapons, intimidation by well-armed international and local thugs, corrupted democracies, corrupted markets, massive thefts via inflation, inadequate schools, unnecessary poverty, destruction of wildlife, and gross pollution, to name a few. Why do people tolerate this severe abuse, when they so vastly outnumber the few beneficiaries?The main explanation, in our opinion, is the operation of Concentrated Benefit over Diffuse Injury, insidiously and incessantly. By the time people think, "We're just not going to take this anymore," the costs and personal dangers of reversing the abuse have usually grown too. Moreover, there is no inherent limit to the scope and number of attempted abuses, whereas citizens have inherently limited resources to resist. 3 Pollution Fights: What Every Activist Soon Learns Narrow, special interests can prevail via government force, via direct force, or via deceit. Direct force is used by gangs and tyrants, but polluters achieve their aims "peacefully" by using both deceit and the force of government on their behalf. This essay explores some strategies in the environmental movement toward the law of Concentrated Benefit -- with emphasis on the problem of pollution at low levels. The axiom of Concentrated Benefit over Diffuse Injury accounts for the current promotion of a "de minimis" policy toward nuclear (and other) pollution. A de minimis policy asserts that society should not concern itself with trivia. (Latin: De minimis non curat lex. The law does not concern itself with trifles.) A de minimis policy toward pollution asserts that poisonous discharges and human exposures below a certain level should be treated as non-existent -- because their consequences are allegedly trivial. Trivial. That is the essence of the axiom. Triumph for each injustice is virtually assured if the advocates succeed in presenting it as trivial. When polluters and their agents accuse citizens who oppose them ("activists") of being Chicken Littles and hysterics and ignorant extremists, the polluters are working for a public perception that the injury is trivial. And because the general public can not afford to do battle against trivial injustices, citizen activists against pollution know that their chances of prevailing are improved if they can show that the pollution constitutes a calamity for the community. Anyone who has been an activist for a year has learned how the axiom of Concentrated Benefit over Diffuse Injury "demands" proof of a calamity. 4 The Meaning of No Safe Doses As a result of the axiom, we receive appeals again and again from citizen-groups who need an expert to swear that nuclear pollution in their locality is (or will be) acalamity. And since we are well known for stating that human evidence proves, "There is no safe dose of radiation," it is natural that we hear from these groups. The word "safe" means free from risk of injury. Existing human studies combined with nuclear track-analysis show that every dose of ionizing radiation confers a risk of carcinogenic injury, even at the lowest possible total dose and dose-rate (Gofman 1981, Gofman 1990). Government statements are false when they say that it is impossible to know what happens at very low doses of ionizing radiation. Our statement that there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation does not mean that every dose -- regardless of its size -- produces the same amount of hazard or qualifies as a calamity. Our books show again and again that the size of a radiation risk is tied to the amount of the accumulated dose and the number of people who receive it. "Two billion people on the planet have no electricity. But they want it -- and how they get it is going to be one of the most critical environmental issues of the next century." - Neville Williams, Solar Electric Light Fund (cited in 1993 by Sustainable Technologies International, Box 1115, Carbondale CO 81623). Even after a nuclear accident as severe as Chernobyl, it is unrealistic for an irradiated population to feel, "We are all doomed," or "The children are all doomed." Although the aggregate number of Chernobyl-induced cancers will be very large -- at least a million over all time -- this will occur not because everyone in fallout areas has a high personal risk of cancer from Chernobyl. It will occur because there is no safe dose, and therefore the accident creates a small extra risk of cancer for many people (over 500 million exposed individuals, inside and outside the ex-USSR). The fact that the enormous health


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