Don’t Trust the CDC, Question It

 Most of us tend to trust a centralized, official agency regardless of its performance. It’s much easier to look to the official, well-known source rather than to check multiple independent sources. Are you wondering when you can reasonably stop wearing a mask at work? In public places inside or out? Are you wondering whether your children should be back in school? Whether you can safely travel, especially after being vaccinated? If you are looking to the CDC for advice be aware that they have made an enormous mess. They have often failed to “follow the science”. They are a bureaucratic and politicized organization. To think of them as providing an objective, apolitical, reliable opinion is naïve. Look at the CDC’s advice, of course, but then question it and look elsewhere. 

Too many people hear the phrase “follow the science” and make two critical mistakes. The first is believing that there is a body of firm conclusions that constitute “the science” and all you have to do is accept them. Such an approach effectively turns science into religion, at least from the point of view of the believer. In a few physical sciences, there may be something very close to a core of firm conclusions – although even long-held laws in physics, chemistry, and cosmology can be and have been overturned – but the core of most sciences is much less firm. In the fields of nutrition, climate, and economic forecasting – to name just three – even many core principles and assumptions are highly contested and often on the brink of being falsified. It is fundamentally an error to see “science” as a thing. Science is a process of conjectures and refutations. 

The second critical mistake is to equate “the science” with official government agencies, such as the CDC, FDA, and all the other three- and four-letter agencies. Science is a highly distributed process. Today, a disturbing amount of its funding and publication has been centralized and brought under the control of government agencies and self-appointed gatekeepers. The CDC is a disturbing case in point. 

The CDC has been inexcusably wrong on too many major issues. They have been wrong on testing, wrong on masks, wrong on schools, wrong on travel, the effect of COVID on life expectancy, and now they are wrong on the effects of mask mandates and on-site dining. 

Testing: The CDC is directly responsible in large part for the failure in the USA to get up to speed on testing in the crucial early days, when test-and-trace might still have worked. When the coronavirus was spreading early on the in the USA, the CDC told state and local officials that its “testing capacity is more than adequate to meet current testing demands,” according to a Feb. 26 agency email seen by The Wall Street Journal. In the first week of February 2020, the CDC sent 160,000 tests to labs around the country. 

The agency botched that test kit, developed in one of their labs, leading to the retraction of many tests. After the tests were withdrawn still no approval was being given for private labs to produce tests. Private labs were eager to fill the gap but were barred. State officials and medical providers pled with the agency to open up testing, but the CDC turned away. Nor did health officials coordinate with private companies to ensure the availability of test-kit supplies. These delays at a critical early stage seriously damaged the country’s ability to contain the spread of the virus. The botched tests made it impossible to accurately assess how far and how fast the disease was spreading. 

Among those coercively prevented from improving early testing was infectious disease expert, Dr. Helen Y. Chu. (Her story is told in a March 10 New York Times article.) Her requests for permission to test nasal swabs from people experiencing symptoms were turned down by the CDC for weeks. The CDC told her that she needed approval from the FDA, but they would not give it. Finally, Dr. Chu did the tests without permission. She found a positive test for a teenager from Seattle who had not recently traveled – a discovery she would have made weeks earlier if not suppressed by the bureaucracy. They did not admit to their error or give her credit. Dr. Scott Lindquist, Washington state’s epidemiologist for communicable diseases, says, “What they [the CDC and the FDA] said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu. Stop testing.” 

The core problem here is coercive power and monopolization. No one could know precisely how the virus would spread. People other than the CDC should have been allowed to do what they thought best based on their distinctive view of the situation. This is a classic example of the value of economic freedom though what Friedrich Hayek, co-winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics, understood as its allowing people to act on dispersed information, or what Hayek called knowledge of “particular circumstances of time and place.” The CDC ignored pleas from state officials and medical providers to broaden testing, and failed to work with outside companies to help the availability of test-kit supplies. (For more on this, see David Henderson’s “Capitalism is Still Working, Thank Goodness”) 

The CDC hasn’t always acted so disastrously and arrogantly. Just a decade ago, in the H1N1 flu epidemic, the CDC worked with private labs and medical facilities to get tests into people’s hands.  Even former director of the CDC (2009 to 2017) Tom Frieden said “This was kind of a perfect storm of three separate failures”, noting the botched test, overstrict FDA rules and sidelined private labs. Lacking reliable early testing, the opportunity to map early outbreaks and impose effective quarantines was blown. The World Health Organization (WHO) had sent out hundreds of thousands of testing kits to numerous countries and, on January 17, 2020 published a protocol of German origin that gave instructions that would help laboratories develop the tests. The same day, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the U.S. National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, stated that the CDC would produce its own version. (Learn more from “The Monumental Failure of the CDC”: 

Masks: The CDC (and Anthony Fauci) did not provide a consistent or evidence-based recommendation on masks. For several weeks, the CDC assured Americans that wearing a face mask in public was not necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19. They eventually changed their messaging but then played a major role in creating shortages of face masks, along with other federal agencies that prevented the importation of KN-95 masks. (The feds finally backed off on April 3, 2020.) Back-and-forth messaging first said that only health care workers and people who were sick needed to wear masks and then recommended that everyone wear face coverings when they’re out in public. The CDC utterly failed to provide clear and consistent communication. 

Along with the FDA, it was the CDC that played a major role in creating a face mask shortage. Hospitals are not allowed to purchase masks from any suppliers they think suitable. They may only buy from suppliers certified by both the CDC and the FDA. As demand for masks in America grew, supply was constrained by the slow certification process. The CDC’s own data shows that it takes an average of 95 days to approve new certifications for face mask suppliers. Numerous foreign companies that could have supplied us with masks were not allowed to do so. Even certified suppliers had to jump through bureaucratic hoops in our highly-interventionist economy before they could fill orders. (For more information, see “America Could Import Countless More Face Masks if Federal Regulators Would Get Out of the Way” 

In addition, the CDC’s messaging about masks has been inconsistent and even dishonest. As a result, many people have understandably lost trust in their guidance. For more, see this article from The Verge. 

Before COVID, there was never a demand that Americans be forced to wear masks outside of specific medical settings. Growing evidence, piled on top of pre-COVID evidence, suggests that they may be essentially useless (given the kinds worn and how they are worn) and may make things worse both in their direct effects and by lulling people into thinking that other measures no longer matter. Whatever your evaluation of the conflicting evidence, each individual should be free to decide whether or not to wear one, so long as they abide by the rules of each house and business they visit. Although the agency’s guidance is officially nonbinding, it has more power than many formal regulations while lacking transparency and public scrutiny. 

For links to evidence you probably haven’t seen: “Masking: A Careful Review of the Evidence”, and this  and this.

Schools: School closures were enforced for months despite the evidence and despite the tremendous downsides to forcing young children to stay home for a year. Some of the blame for this can certainly be placed on teachers’ unions. The unions have talked about “the science” when it suited them but ignored it when it became entirely clear that children were at very low risk of contracting or passing on the virus. Rather, they demanded that teachers stay home but continue to get paid. 

School closures have especially harmed those from poor backgrounds, often living in dense conditions in bad neighborhoods, and autistic children and others with special needs. Instead of the excessive CDC guidelines, schools could have followed the Israel approach of regular testing of teachers and students and self-isolation when infection is found. Despite the data being clear since mid-2020, the CDC only changed its guidance for schools in January 2021. Derek Thompson’s article in The Atlantic makes us ask why the media, government leaders and bureaucrats, and medical experts all act to damage our children with unsupported school closures. See more here. 

Travel: The CDC and President Biden acknowledge that it’s safe for fully vaccinated people to travel. Even so, they should not! They are over-cautious in a way that defies common sense. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky wailed “We’re all doomed because I feel it!” on one day after proclaiming the amazing power of COVID vaccines. The next, she undermines her previous statements by insisting that the fully vaccinated should continue to wear masks, socially distance, and avoid travel if they can. This confusing behavior can be understood if you understand that the CDC is a devotee of the precautionary principle, and doesn’t want people to do anything that carries the tiniest risk of harm. Apparently, avoiding tiny risks of harm is more important than anything else in life. 

For more, see Robby Soave’s “The CDC Says Vaccinated People Can Safely Travel, But Please Don't” and “Despite what the CDC says, domestic travel is safe for fully vaccinated people, even Biden is doing it” and “Stop telling people not to travel. Health officials should be teaching us how to do it safely” and “Even more evidence shows vaccinated people are unlikely to transmit the coronavirus or get asymptomatic infections”.

The six-foot mandate: How many Americans are aware that the six-feet distancing guideline is based on extremely little evidence? And that many countries in Europe and elsewhere have different guidelines? The United States has some of the strictest social distancing measures in the world. Europeans in many countries only have to stand 1 meter (about 3 feet) apart. Do they know more than us? Or are both prescriptive orders set arbitrarily? China, France, Denmark, and Hong Kong choose one meter. South Korea went for 1.4 meters; Germany, Italy, and Australia chose 1.5 meters. We still don’t know how the CDC arrived at 6 feet as the magic number. More: “The 6-Foot Mandate Was Bad Science” and “Where’s the Science Behind CDC’s 6-Foot Social-Distance Decree?” 

The WSJ article makes the point that the complaint is not that experts were wrong in the absence of good information. “The question is whether there is an effective process for establishing these measures and re-evaluating them as new information emerges. Science isn’t a set of unchanging truths handed down by a government agency.” Compounding the problem, the CDC “the CDC isn’t always clear on when the science is unsettled. This makes it harder for the American public to identify which recommendations are more open to discretion. The agency also doesn’t always identify the underlying science of its recommendations.” 

The extension of the unjust eviction ban: It’s been announced that the CDC will be extending its eviction moratorium through the end of June. While delinquent renters may welcome this, landlords will be rightly unhappy that they are banned from taking back their property from nonpaying tenants. Previously good tenants who have fallen behind on payments aren’t at much risk. With so many people unemployed, it’s difficult for landlords to find new, reliable tenants. Rental listing website Zillow found, in states where data are available, that actual evictions have come in far below predicted evictions. Claims about ridiculously large numbers of likely evictions are unsupported and use crazy assumptions. For more, see “CDC Keeps Extending Its Illegal Eviction Ban”. 

CDC misleadingly says COVID caused a reduction of one year in US life expectancy: A CDC spokesman has claimed that Covid has resulted in U.S. life expectancy falling by a year. (This was Elizabeth Arias. The real number is about 5 days or 0.013 years. How could the CDC be so badly wrong? How could it promote that false information to an already-traumatized public? 

In one sense, that estimate follows standard guidelines for calculating changes in life expectancy. When a change is expected to affect life expectancy each year in the future to about the same extent as in the latest year, the process produces reasonable results. The CDC calculated what the effect on life expectancy would be if mortality rates stayed at their 2020 level. In other words, they figured out how much Covid would reduce life expectancy if the pandemic were repeated every year forever. 

What the CDC should have assumed is that Covid-19 will increase mortality for only a brief period relative to the span of a normal life. The standard method of calculating life expectancy is extremely sensitive to passing events such as pandemics and wars. The CDC’s statement is concerning because almost everyone will take it to mean that Covid has shortened the life of every person by a year on average. For those in the 20-49 age group, the decline in life expectancy is less than one day. Even for seniors, the days lost comes to 87 days of discounted quality-adjusted life expectancy. 

Quick math: Counting the 362,000 deaths in 2020, and accepting the (possibly excessive) estimate of 12 years of life lost on average, you get 4,344,000 life years lost. Divide by population = 0.013 or 4.75 days. Counting all Covid deaths to date: 570,294 x 12 = 6,843,528 = 0.02 or 7.5 days. For more, see Peter B. Bach, “CDC estimated a one-year decline in life expectancy in 2020. Not so — try five days” <https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/25/cdc-one-year-decline-life-expectancy-really-five-days/> 

Excessively precautionary: Behind many of the CDC’s mistakes is its implicit attachment to the precautionary principle. (You can find plenty of thoughts about that principle elsewhere on my blog.) As Robby Soave from Reason notes, “It’s important to keep in mind that the CDC has always urged people to follow impractically cautious health guidelines. For instance, the CDC currently recommends that men consume no more than two alcoholic drinks and that women consume no more than one drink, each day. The agency’s clear preference is for people not to consume alcohol at all.” 

The CDC has gone beyond excessive caution to bad policies and embarrassing public doomsaying. Director Rochelle Walensky warned of “impending doom” if states reopen too quickly. As POLITICO put it, a “visibly shaken” Walensky stood in front of the cameras and said, “Right now, I'm scared” and implied that her feelings were a sound basis for us all to be deeply fearful. Of course, fear is an effective tool of control. 

The CDC has acted much as one would expect a centralized government agency to act. This is not the fault of the people working there. It’s the result of the agency’s structure and incentives. Unfortunately, most of the American public persists in the foolish belief that the CDC is doing fine and, if not perfect, that can be solved by throwing more taxpayer money at it and installing “the right people”. 

Perils, Part 2: Pervasive Precaution

Pervasive Precaution

The precautionary principle, as defined by Soren Holm and John Harris in Nature magazine in 1999, asserts:

When an activity raises threats of serious or irreversible harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures that prevent the possibility of harm shall be taken even if the causal link between the activity and the possible harm has not been proven or the causal link is weak and the harm is unlikely to occur.

The version from the Wingspread Statement, 1998:

“When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

The precautionary principle has taken many forms, but these definitions capture the essence of most of them. Starting life as the German Vorsorgeprinzip (literally “precaution principle”), this rule assumed a role in institutional decision making in the North-Sea conferences from 1984 to 1995, and in the deliberations leading to the Rio Declaration of 1992, the UN Framework Climate Convention of 1992, and the Kyoto Protocol. Formulations of the principle do vary in some important ways. The fuzziness resulting from this lack of a standard definition causes trouble, but is also the very characteristic that appeals to advocates of technological and environmental regulation. They have come to favor the precautionary principle—in whatever form best helps them maneuver policies so as to further their goals.

In its most modest form, the principle urges us not to wait for scientific certainty before taking precautionary measures. Considered out of context, that policy is entirely reasonable. We rarely achieve the high standard of scientific certainty about the effects of our activities. But this fact applies just as much to actions in the form of restrictions, regulations, and prohibitions as to innovative and productive activities. By recognizing the frequent necessity to act or refrain from acting in conditions of uncertainty, we are not thereby committed to favoring a policy of restrictive precautionary measures. This message about certainty and action therefore tells us little. And the rest of the principle provides no further guidance about choosing under uncertainty.

Its roots in the German Vorsorgeprinzip mean that the common use of the principle goes well beyond urging preventative or prohibitory action based on inconclusive evidence. An attribute more central to the principle is the judgment of “better safe than sorry”. In other words, err on the side of caution. While this sentiment makes for a perfectly sound proverb, it provides a treacherous foundation for a principle to guide assessments of technological and environmental impacts. As a proverb, “better safe than sorry” is counterbalanced by opposing—but equally valid—proverbs, such as “he who hesitates is lost”, or “make hay while the sun shines.”

Precautionary measures typically impose costs, burdens, and their own harms. Administering precautionary actions becomes especially dangerous when the principle says, or is interpreted as saying, that those actions are justified and required “if any possibility” of harm exists. In this (typical) interpretation, it becomes ridiculously easy to rationalize restrictive measures in the absence of any real evidence. Clearly, this pushes the principle far beyond dismissing the need for fully established cause-effect relationships.

Statements of the precautionary principle vary also in whether or not they specify that the principle deals with threats of serious or irreversible harm or damage. Problems arise with the usage of “serious” and “irreversible”, but at least this clause limits the application of the principle. More demanding versions of the principle, such as the widely-quoted Wingspread Statement, call for precautionary measures to come into play even when the possible harm is not serious or irreversible.

Statements of the precautionary principle may include a cost-effectiveness clause. This happens all too rarely in practice, perhaps because most advocates of the principle aim to stop the targeted technology or activity, not to maximize welfare. The Rio Declaration of 1992 stands out by incorporating such a clause:

“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures.”

Some worthy attempts have been made to improve the principle by adding to it. In 2001, the European Environment Agency issued a document conveying “Late Lessons from Early Warnings”, which issued twelve accompanying guidelines. These included some excellent recommendations, such as “Identify and reduce interdisciplinary obstacles to learning”, and “Systematically scrutinise the claimed justifications and benefits alongside the potential risks.” Unfortunately, advocates of the principle have not paid attention to these suggestions, and many of them co-exist uncomfortably with the main thrust of the principle. Another noteworthy attempt at amelioration is a May 2000 Science paper titled “Science and the Precautionary Principle”. This set out five “Guidelines for Application of the Precautionary Principle”: Proportionality, nondiscrimination, consistency, cost-benefit examination, and examination of scientific developments.

With or without patches, the deeply flawed precautionary principle can cause trouble. It already has. Awareness of the pervasive, profoundly restrictive force of the principle is all the more remarkable for its relative obscurity, especially outside Europe. Even among widely read people, a large majority do not recall ever having heard the term—although they have certainly heard “better safe than sorry”. Yet the dominant influence of the principle can be found everywhere.

Consider, for a start, the central role of the precautionary principle in shaping environmental policy in the European Union. The foundational Maastricht Treaty on the European Union states that “Community policy on the environment…shall be based on the precautionary principle and on the principles that preventive actions should be taken, that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay.” The United Nations joined the precautionary bandwagon when the UN Biosafety Protocol led the way for other international treaties by incorporating the precautionary principle. Some other examples of the principle explicitly at work:

• Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Sept. 16, 1987, 26 ILM 1541.
• Second North Sea Declaration.
• Ministerial Declaration Calling for Reduction of Pollution, Nov. 25, 1987, 27 ILM 835.
• United Nations Environment Program.
• Nordic Council’s Conference.
• Nordic Council’s International Conference on Pollution of the Seas: Final Document Agreed to Oct. 18, 1989, in Nordic Action Plan on Pollution of the Seas, 99 app. V (1990) .
• PARCOM Recommendation 89/1 - 22 June, 1989.
• The Contracting Parties to the Paris Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-Based Sources:
• Third North Sea Conference.
• Bergen Declaration on Sustainable Development.
• Second World Climate Conference.
• Bamako Convention on Transboundary Hazardous Waste into Africa.
• OECD Council Recommendation C(90)164 on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, January 1991.
• Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.
• The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, June 1992.
• Climate Change Conference (Framework Convention on Climate Change, May 9, 1992).
• UNCED Text on Ocean Protection.
• Energy Charter Treaty.

The influence of the principle has been felt in South America too. Transgenic crops have been prohibited throughout Brazil since 1998. In that year, a judge made an interpretation of the version of the principle included in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development—a statement coming out of the 1992 Earth Summit held in Brazil.

The precautionary principle is followed even more widely than it might seem from official mentions, especially in the United States. We often find the principle being applied without disclosure or explicit acknowledgment. Perhaps this happens because the principle ably captures common intuitions that grow out of fear fed by lack of knowledge. Our first reaction to an apparent threat is usually: Stop it now! We may disregard the costs of stopping the threat. Our sense of urgency may blind us to considering whether we might have better options at our disposal.

When the United Kingdom faced the appalling, if over-inflated, menace of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE), people quickly demanded that authorities require proof of virtually zero risk for any substance that might have BSE contamination. Professor James Bridges, chair of the European Commission’s toxicology committee, referred to this “extreme precautionary approach in the context of other food risks” and noted it had “involved enormous costs”. Of course, if such proof could be provided (which it surely cannot) and at a low cost, the demand would be reasonable. But the actual reaction lacks any sense of proportionality and objective risk assessment.

In the United States, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development affirmed the precautionary principle, without using the term explicitly, in its statement:

There are certain beliefs that we as Council members share that underlie all of our agreements. We believe: (number 12) even in the face of scientific uncertainty, society should take reasonable actions to avert risks where the potential harm to human health or the environment is thought to be serious or irreparable.

The United States has made extensive use of precautionary prevention—sometimes quite sensibly—even if no mention is made of a principle. Sometimes precautionary prevention has been applied earlier in the US than in Europe. The European Environment Agency publication “Late Lessons from Early Warnings” notes four examples: The Delaney Clause in the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, 1957–96, which banned animal carcinogens from the human food chain; a ban on the use of scrapie-infected sheep and goat meat in the animal and human food chain in the early 1970s; a ban on the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosols in 1977, several years before similar action in most of Europe; and a ban on the use of DES as a growth promoter in beef, 1972–79, nearly 10 years before the EU ban in 1987.

The most formidable manifestations of the precautionary principle in the US may be found in the regulatory practices of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). It’s not the only US government agency applying the principle, usually without naming it—and without calculating its costs and benefits. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) bound itself to the principle in developing and enforcing regulations on synthetic chemicals. US regulators have taken an even more strongly precautionary approach than Europe to some kinds of risks, such as nuclear power, lead in gasoline, and the approval of new medicines—which takes us back to the FDA.

Precautionary FDA regulation may have the most drastic impact on human well-being of any mentioned so far. The FDA has successfully sought to extend its powers over the decades, first solidifying its authority to determine when a new medication could be considered safe, and later to determine when it could be considered effective. If the agency were using a purely rational approach to regulation—one that accurately aimed at maximizing human health—it would fully account for both the risks of approving a new medicine that might have damaging side-effects, and the dangers of withholding approval or delaying approval to a potentially beneficial medicine. In practice, this is far from the way the FDA operates.

In reality, the FDA consistently follows a path close to one that the precautionary principle would prescribe: It puts all its energies into minimizing the risk of a new drug that might be approved, then goes on to cause harm. Very little energy goes into considering the potential benefits from making the new treatment available. Regulators can make mistakes on both sides of this balance.

If they approve a drug that turns out to be harmful, they have made a “Type I error”, as it is called in risk analysis. They might also make a Type II error by making a beneficial medication unavailable—by delaying it, rejecting it for consideration, by failing to approve it, or by wrongly withdrawing it from the market.

Both types of error are bad for the public. For the regulators, the risk of Type I errors looks much more frightening that Type II errors. If they make a Type II mistake and prevent a beneficial treatment coming to market, few people will ever be aware of what has been lost. Probably the media will be silent, and Congress will join them. Regulators have little incentive to avoid Type II errors. But what of the prospect of making a Type I error? This is a regulator’s worst nightmare.

Suppose you are the regulator, and you approve a promising new drug that turns out to be another Thalidomide, causing horrible deformations in newborns. Or, consider what it felt like to be one of the regulators who approved the swine flu vaccine in 1976. The vaccine did its job, but turned out to cause temporary paralysis in some patients. Such a Type I error is immediately obvious and attains a high profile as lawyers, the media, the public, and eager politicians pile on, screaming at you with rage and blame. We’ve seen this more recently in the cases of Vioxx and Celebrex.

You will hardly be a happy official, and your career may be destroyed. You approved the drug according to your best judgment, but your error is not forgiven or forgotten. Given these asymmetrical incentives, regulators naturally tend to err far on the side of being overly cautious. They go to great lengths to avoid Type I errors—a factor that has raised the cost of new drug development and approval into the hundreds of millions of dollars and added years to the process. (The only effective countervailing force in recent history has been the focused pressure of activists to speed approval of AIDS drugs.)

Regulators, then, will not make an objective, comprehensive, balanced assessment of both Type I and II risks. The overall outcome is a regulatory scheme driven by incentives that bias it strongly against new products and innovation. Some of the regulators themselves have recognized and publicly expressed these uneven pressures. Former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt put it this way:

In all our FDA history, we are unable to find a single instance where a Congressional committee investigated the failure of FDA to approve a new drug. But, the times when hearings have been held to criticize our approval of a new drug have been so frequent that we have not been able to count them. The message to FDA staff could not be clearer. Whenever a controversy over a new drug is resolved by approval of the drug, the agency and the individuals involved likely will be investigated. Whenever such a drug is disapproved, no inquiry will be made. The Congressional pressure for negative action is, therefore, intense. And it seems to be ever increasing.

The writings of well-known prophets of gloom provide further evidence of the pervasiveness of precautionary thinking. Consider Bill Joy’s much-discussed essay in Wired, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Joy proposed that we apply a precautionary approach to a limited number of technologies—but technologies with a powerful reach and impact. He labeled the inventions that frightened him as “GNR”, standing for genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics. Joy focused on these three areas, but his fears apply to any form of technology endowed with the power of self-replication. In his manifesto, he warned of what he saw as immense new threats:

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species… Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.

And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

Just like other advocates of precautionary measures, Joy concluded with a call for restricting or relinquishing technology. Going further than many (at least in their public statements), Joy also called for “limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.” He also mentioned that he saw many activists joining him as “the voices for caution and relinquishment…” I will return to Joy’s proposed precautionary measures and their effects near the end of the chapter. In a later chapter, I will consider the views of Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, and Michael Sandel, all of who take precautionary approaches to enhancement technologies, which include Joy’s GNR trio.