Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity
| Autor: | Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Piers Millett |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Catastrophic risk Risk Human extinction Health (social science) Existentialism Cost effectiveness Health Toxicology and Mutagenesis Cost-Benefit Analysis Biosecurity 0211 other engineering and technologies 02 engineering and technology Management Monitoring Policy and Law Risk Assessment 03 medical and health sciences Risk Factors Humans Probability 021110 strategic defence & security studies Extinction Existential risk Cost–benefit analysis Management science Public Health Environmental and Occupational Health social sciences Original Articles humanities Biothreat 030104 developmental biology Models Economic Work (electrical) Risk analysis (engineering) 13. Climate action Emergency Medicine Cost-effectiveness Business Quality-Adjusted Life Years Safety Research |
| Zdroj: | Health Security |
| ISSN: | 2326-5108 |
| Popis: | In the decades to come, advanced bioweapons could threaten human existence. Although the probability of human extinction from bioweapons may be low, the expected value of reducing the risk could still be large, since such risks jeopardize the existence of all future generations. We provide an overview of biotechnological extinction risk, make some rough initial estimates for how severe the risks might be, and compare the cost-effectiveness of reducing these extinction-level risks with existing biosecurity work. We find that reducing human extinction risk can be more cost-effective than reducing smaller-scale risks, even when using conservative estimates. This suggests that the risks are not low enough to ignore and that more ought to be done to prevent the worst-case scenarios. The authors provide an overview of biotechnological extinction risk, make some rough initial estimates for how severe the risks might be, and compare the cost-effectiveness of reducing these extinction-level risks with existing biosecurity work. They find that reducing human extinction risk can be more cost-effective than reducing smaller-scale risks, even when using conservative estimates suggesting that the risks are not low enough to ignore and that more ought to be done to prevent the worst-case scenarios. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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