March 17, 1975

Dr. David Okrent
Energy and Kinetics Department
School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California 90024

Dear Dr. Okrent,

  Thank you for sending pe the WASH-1400 reports and  c omments, which
of course I must take soxae time to digest before returning.

   I am writing now in response to reading your proposal for renewal,
to the NSF, and certainly wish you well!

  I wonder if I might ask you for another copy of KNG-7478? (I lent
the first one out and it may be a while before I can get it back).

   I am happy to see further criticism of the concept of the discounted
loss of earnings! In that connection I wonder if you have seen Kenneth
Arrow's discussion in a recent publication of the NRC:%he Ethics of
Health CareTwhich also bears directly on this question.

  Arrowqs name of course also brings to mind.the analysis of insurance
which you mentioned on page 19. I used to be more optimistic that the kind
of third party risk assessment and trade-off with premiums would enable
insurance to be used as a method of regulating risk. However, I wonder
what the historical record shows with respect to the efficacy of this kind
of brokerage in helping to improve the perfomance of individual and
institutional behavior with respect to the risks covered. I suppose that
fire insurance must have had some beneficial effect (omitting for the moment
the induced arson). But I am told that the level of technical input that
most insurance companies have applied is of a relatively low order and is
hardly at all applied to the amelioration of risks. I would say that most
people are often willing to pay probabilistically excessive premitrms for
insurance simply to reduce the cost of planning for a wide variety of
,contingencies, and to avoid market failures when sudden emergent
contingencies arise.

  With respect to item e) on page 19, I can suggest subjects of
interest under the heading of "stored lethality" although you may have
reason not to wish to undertake them here.  One of the more obvious sources
is the potential "civilianization" of lethal weaponry originally developed
for military purposes, e.g. plastic explosives and bazookas as already
materialized examples. I have been quite exercised personally about binary
chemical weapons as a serious potential threat along these lines. In

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Dr. David Okrent

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distinction to nuclear power, and to some extent nuclear weaponry, no
one, as far as I can find, has the job of anticipating these spill-
overs in the cast effectiveness analysis of proposed military systems.

   The recent conference at Asilomar (see Science for March 14th) was
of course a constructive effort to address a somewhat related topic.
Perhaps there would be some merit in using exactly that example which ought
to be dealt with more precisely from the standpoint of policy analysis than
I fear was possible at the conference or in the medium of the press.

   Along a somewhat related vein would be other concerns about epidemics
and public health hazards, for example the extreme vulnerability of our
water supplies to sabotage and to some extent to accidental initiation of
epidemics, Our system of international quarantine has similar loopholes
as documented for example in a recent book on Lassa fever: "Fever" by
John G. Fuller.

   On page 24 D2, a topic related to some that I had mentioned just a
while ago, you might wish to consult Ted Gurr, or to scan a recent collection
"Violence as PoliticsW edited by Herbert Hirsch and David C. Perry, Harper
and Row. I am sure you are acquainted with the flurry of recent writings on
the problem of civilian proliferation of nuclear weapons capability which
is a somewhat parallel question. The works on cormnand and control problems,
for example by Larus, might also give some suggestions for expertise.
And particularly perhaps you would find it profitable to consult with
Brian Jenkins   at Rand who is a political scientist.who has been recently
very much interested in "stateless war". I personally view risks in these
dimensions as among the largest that our society faces - short of all out
war - and it would be foolish not to give them requisite attention.

Sincerely yours,
             .

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr