The Contingent Power of Experts: Public Health Policy in the United States, Britain, and France

Abstract

Dangers to life and health abound. Even among the subset known to medicine and science, however, there is no guarantee that any particular danger will rise to the level of a recognized public health problem or elicit a response from the makers of public policy. The path from knowledge to policy is not straightforward; scientific consensus does not lead automatically to policy consensus. Judgments of what dangers should be most feared, how to explain them, what to do about them, and even whether they are public health problems at all are the outcome of social processes. A couple of examples may help to clarify these points.