Posted Sunday, July 20, 2003; 16.11BS
How worried should we be? That depends on how much uncertainty we're prepared to live with. And these days we're prepared to live with less and less. As science, medicine and technology make life safer, healthier and more comfortable, our intolerance of risk is growing. Plenty of dangers have been eliminated — childhood mortality is way down, diseases that were once common have been eradicated, food is more plentiful and nutritious than ever. But these advances have made us even more sensitive to the risks that remain. "Before the umbrella, if it started to rain you got wet," says Raffaele De Giorgi, director of the Center for the Study of Risk at Italy's University of Lecce. "With the invention of the umbrella, the risk of getting wet was born."

Most Europeans, for example, are alarmed by the prospect of eating GM foods, but many will happily sit in a bar munching potato chips, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol — all of which together amount to a much clearer health risk than sipping a bowl of genetically modified tomato soup. Europeans are suspicious of GM foods despite the absence of any proof that they are actually unsafe. In contrast, everybody knows smoking can kill you — but 94 million people in the E.U. do it anyway. "There are discussions about health risks that are a luxury," says Irene Lukassowitz, spokeswoman for Berlin's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. "By and large, we are very well-fed and have the time to worry about even the smallest risk. Consumers want to be protected, but prefer it if there is someone else to blame."

Helene Guldberg, a developmental psychologist at Britain's Open University, believes that our risk- aversion poses dangers of its own. Society's reluctance to accept the inevitable risks that accompany progress, she argues, could slow the pace of discovery and innovation. "There can never be a guarantee that anything is harmless," she says. "But unless there is evidence of harm, we shouldn't worry. Without risk taking there can be no experimentation, and therefore no progress."

Learning to live with risk is one of those quintessentially modern skills — like learning to order a venti-skim latte or buy groceries online — but a whole lot more difficult and important. To manage our fear of risk, we have to come to terms with some very tricky issues. Can we trust scientists, politicians and the media to interpret the dangers and benefits of new technologies? When they dump the choices back in our laps and tell us to make the decisions — test the fetus or not; eat the food or not; use the phone or not — how do we do it? Should we just stop worrying and be happy? To find out, Time examined the science and the hype around three controversial issues — GM foods, mobile phones and household chemicals. Here's our anatomy of risk.

On the GM side, treated with the relatively mild glyphosate, there were occasional clumps of small, stunted weeds as well as "midges, bees, beetles and a pair of partridges feeding their young," Lewis remembers. On the non- GM side — which was treated with simazine, a stronger conventional herbicide that clears weeds but can render the soil sterile — there was nothing; no weeds, no insects, no birds. "How can these anti-GM protesters continue down this route?" Lewis wonders. "What more assurance do they want?"

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	Are First World Fears Causing the Third World to go Hungry? [July 10, 2001] People in the U.S. and Western Europe have qualms about genetically modified foods. But does that mean we should deny those foods to developing nations? Read Any Good Fruit? [Nov. 24, 2002] The E.U. approves tough new labeling for GM food, pleasing activists and complicating trade relations To Greener Pastures [Mar. 12, 2001] Germany's new farming minister is up to her ears in food scares and dead cows. Her answer: Go organic When Pigs Go Bad [Feb. 27, 2001] British farming, in its worst slump since the 1930s, is hit by a new plague: foot-and-mouth disease Slaughterhouse [March 12, 2001] Cattle burn, farmers despair and consumers worry as a new food-related catastrophe hits Europe Search all issues of TIME Magazine