---
title: Acts of commission rather than omission
date: "2005-01-27T12:00:00Z"
categories:
  - links
wp_id: 771
---

[Thinking](http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0471494577/?tag=sanand-20), a book by Hardman and Macchi, says people would **much** rather let bad things happen, than take a risk to stop them:

> Decisions with identical outcomes are judged as worse when they result from acts of commission than acts of omission. For example, most people are reluctant to vaccinate children against a potentially lethal flu when side effects of the vaccine can cause death. Faced with a flu epidemic that is expected to kill 10 out of 10,000 children, most people are not willing to accept a 9 out of 10,000 risk of death from vaccination, and the median acceptable maximum risk is 5 in 10,000. Apparantly, killing a child with a vaccination (that is, an act of commission) is perceived as worse than causing its death by failing to vaccinate (that is, an act of omission).