Even medical decisions determining life and death remain governed by uncertainty

Evidence

Harvard economist Richard Zeckhauser (2014, 3) illustrates this inescapability of uncertainty in some of the most important decisions that could possibly be made—those concerning life or death in the medical field: “Terms such as relative risk ratios and survival risk pepper the literature. But a patient who presses a physician will learn that aggregate statistics do not apply to the individual’s case, that the physician and delivery institution can significantly affect risk levels, and that no data are so finely parsed as to predict individual outcomes. Uncertainty rules.” — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 54

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Zeckhauser’s argument imply risk-based medicine is inherently limited, and could this be Komporozos-Athanasiou’s bridge to applying uncertainty beyond economics?
• XREF: connects to: Decisions are made under irreducible uncertainty that evidence alone cannot resolve — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 490; Real decisions operate under uncertainty where probabilities are unknowable, not just risk — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 388; Decisions among incommensurable values remain possible without a decision rule. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 426 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Decisions are made under irreducible uncertainty that evidence alone cannot resolve — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 490; Real decisions operate under uncertainty where probabilities are unknowable, not just risk — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 388; Decisions among incommensurable values remain possible without a decision rule. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 426 (+2 more)