The “precautionary principle” is often invoked when people are facing the technological applications of new scientific discoveries. It is a sacrosanct attitude: when one moves from tests carried out under laboratory conditions, where a new technology was used by a small number of people who are expected to be aware of the potential risks, to a mass use that leads to widespread diffusion, it is necessary to be aware of the potential risks involved.
To mention one of the classic examples of the latter, just think of X-rays that have revolutionized medicine (and have had a great impact on research in physics, chemistry and biology). At the time of discovery, at the end of the 19th century, the danger of the technique was not immediately recognized. However, it was realized within a few months of the discovery that ionizing radiation can cause serious permanent damage to biological tissues, and since then exposures to X-rays are limited as much as possible.
Alongside the rational use of the principle, however, pretentious ones have become frequent. The habit of invoking the precautionary principle to block the application of new techniques is spreading, evoking the possibility of imaginary possible future risks, perhaps without even suggesting what kind of risk it might be. In this there is often an understandable psychological attitude of refusal of the novelty, an anchorage to what has always been done in a given way and that it is better not to change. Sometimes it is instead an instrumental attempt to oppose by any means to an unwelcome development.
Let’s think about the case of vaccines against Covid, developed with a speed and an effort that is unprecedented in history. Although, before being marketed, they have been tested on a very large sample and have now been used on some billion people, a current of irreducible so-called No-Vax remained. Faced with the objection that we do not know the potential harmful long-term (10-20 years or more) effects of vaccines against Covid-19, one can only point out that if after the experimentation we had waited 10 or 20 years to proceed with mass vaccination, vaccines would have become useless and in the meantime a large number of people would have died from Covid or from its effects.
Another very recent example (I neglect the GMO topic, to which there is article dedicated) is that of the so-called “synthetic meat”. It is not yet marketed in Europe, but a current of thought is developing against the fact that it is being put up for sale. And consider that nobody certainly proposes to force someone to eat this meat, but it would be a free choice of the consumer. In this case invoking the precautionary principle does not apply. I cannot imagine which kind of long-term damage to health could lead a steak composed of animal cells, different from those that possibly involves eating a steak cut from the muscle of a cattle killed for this purpose.
The day the technology would be further developed and becomes convenient both from the economic and ecological point of view, those who do not want to eat it will not be forced to do so.
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