Editorial February 11, 1980 Issue

Risk-free environment

NATHAN A. TALBOT

"One cannot live in a risk-free environment; it does not exist," says the head of a prestigious panel of the National Academy of Sciences.^{Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 1979;} The group was set up a few years ago to investigate the health risks of certain food additives.

Hardly a month goes by without new reports of increased uncertainties over the hazards of the food we eat—or, for that matter, the air we breathe, the water we drink, even the world we live in. The growing awareness of a risk-filled environment is causing many people to wonder if it's not downright dangerous to try to live nowadays. Is there really much of anything we do that doesn't have built-in dangers?

The assessment that a risk-free environment just doesn't exist is almost an understatement—when referring to the realm of materiality. A matter-based existence is simply incapable of offering us any real certainty and security. Regardless of how hard we try, whatever precautions we may take, still, mortality is hardly a logical foundation for secure life. Many would assume that the ultimate answer religion has for the insecurity of this existence is to die and go to heaven where God has everything under control. But some might see an even bigger risk—a risk of going somewhere other than heaven!

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