was a May 2003 conference sponsored by sp!ked, to the announcement of which I blinked then.

The conference grappled with the

spread of risk aversion into ever-more spheres of life.

Here are links to the proceedings and related material

from the conference that have been published to date.

• <a href=”http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DE2F.htm
  
  “>Challenging The Precautionary Principle
  
  by Helene Guldberg:

  How has society come to be governed by the maxim ‘better safe than
  
  sorry’?

• Who Wants To Live Under A System Of Organised Paranoia?
  
  by Mick Hume:
  
  The principle of safety first has become the major barrier to social
  
  advance.

• Panic Attack
  
  by Helene Guldberg:

  spiked’s London conference debated the dangers of risk-aversion.

• Science, Risk And The Price Of Precaution
  
  by Sandy Starr:

  The scientific community imagines what society would have lost, had the
  
  ‘precautionary principle’ governed science in the past.

• Risky Living
  
  by Professor Sir Colin Berry:

  Why do we fear things that are as rare as getting struck by lightning?

• Down With The ‘Slippery Slope’ Argument
  
  by Mick Hume:

  The prevalence of this nonsense speaks volumes about society’s loss of
  
  faith in the human subject.

• Scaring Into Space
  
  by Helene Guldberg:

  A new book by Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, gives humanity a 50/50
  
  chance of survival.

• Apocalypse From Now On
  
  by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick:

  SARS has become a blank screen on to which the world can project its
  
  fears.