This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 7, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How should the creators of our defense policy handle risks like terrorism?

Should they employ the precautionary principle which is aimed at preventive

action, preemptive action, like a preemptive war.

Benjamin H. Friedman is a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute, he says the precautionary

principle is incoherent, and in defense policy he says any decision we make about one risk

is also a decision not to deal with another perhaps more likely risk.

A cautionary principle is a principle used in mostly environmental regulation, written into a few treaties and statements

of purpose at conferences and environmentalists hold and things like that.

And sort of the most popular version of it says something like this.

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment,

precautionary measures should be taken taken even if some cause and effect

relationships are not fully established scientifically. And I would

reinterpret that and just say it means something like this. When some activity

poses a possible risk to health

the government should take a possible I'm sorry should take preventive action even if

the evidence that the risk is a even if evidence of the risk is uncertain in the

cost of regulation or preventive action is high.

And I think that the precautionary principle is actually incoherent, so I'm not sure it actually can

be applied.

When I say it's incoherent, what I mean is that because resources are always

...