What Radiation Protection Suggests About Other Issues, 1990–Present

The strong international regime that has emerged for radiation protection offers lessons that we should apply to other technologies and knowledge-based subjects. An epistemic group of global experts, specialists within this group, challenges from other professional institutions, and public pressure generated radiation protection norms that ensure benefits while limiting risks. These factors encouraged the growth of a resilient international regime that still persists today with no legal authority but universal legitimacy, even if implementation is sometimes incomplete. Epistemic groups of global experts might also bring results for issues like air pollution and toxic chemicals, ozone depleting and climate change gases, nonionizing radiation, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and vaccines, artificial intelligence, genome editing, and arms control. Managing these issues requires balancing risks and benefits. Where such epistemic groups do not emerge, adversarial processes dominate. They make it far harder to reach reasonable outcomes that protect people and the environment as well as the technological enterprises that generate risks. Use of epistemic groups of global experts for non-technological but knowledge-rich subjects is also imaginable, but it does not often happen. In at least some instances, it should.