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With ever-advancing scientific understanding and technological capabilities, humanity stands on the brink of the potential next stage of evolution: evolution engineered by us. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science offer the possibility to enhance human performance, lengthen life-span and reshape our inherited physical, cognitive and emotional identities. But with this promise come huge risks, complex choices and fundamental ethical questions: about evolution; about what it is to be human; and about control over, and the distribution of benefits from, new t

This paper consists of an argument and a pilot study. First is a general, perhaps philosophical, argument against the National Academy's viewpoint(1) that dealing with risk is a two‐stage process consisting of (a) assessment of facts, and (b) evaluation of facts in sociopolitical context. We argue that societal risk intrinsically revolves around social relations as much as around evaluations of probability. Second, we outline one particular approach to analyzing societal risk management styles. We call this the fairness hypothesis. Rather than focusing on probabilities and magnitudes of undesired events, this approach emphasizes societal preferences for principles of achieving consent to a technology, distributing liabilities, and investing trust in institutions. Conflict rather than probability is the chief focus of this approach to societal risk management. This view is illustrated by a recent empirical pilot study that explored the fairness hypothesis in the context of new nuclear technologies.