Everyday VSL

Examples of VSL around us

Tom the Dancing Bug #747 by Ruben Bolling

Click to enlarge.

Holt, Jim. "The Way We Live Now: The Human Factor." The New York Times, 28 March 2004
How much is your life worth to you? On the face of it, that's an idiotic question. No amount of money could compensate you for the loss of your life, for the simple reason that the money would be no good to you if you were dead. And you might feel, for different reasons, that the dollar value of the lives of your spouse or children -- or even a stranger living on the other side of the country -- is also infinite. No one should be knowingly sacrificed for a sum of money: that's what we mean when we say that human life is priceless. Read more at nytimes.com >

Anti-VSL bill proposed by Sen. Boxer, Septempter 2008
...using a dollar value to establish the worth of a human life as the basis of making decisions about whether to take actions to protect humans from dying from environmental pollution has been controversial, because that practice -(A) offends many deeply held religious, moral, and ethical beliefs of people in the United States... Read the full bill here >

Kniesner, Thoma J. "Evaluating Rish Reduction Programs" Now in Perspective, Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, Dec 1997
...if we were to reallocate expenditures from the least to the most effective ways to save lives, we could save an additional 60,000 lives. Read the full article here >