The experience of risk as 'measured vulnerability': health screening and lay uses of numerical risk.

ABSTRACT

As clinical and epidemiological research turns increasingly to statistical probabilities in the identification and management of disease, numerous risk factors have emerged that are applied to individual health surveillance. However, the application of statistical risk is interpreted differently by lay persons from the way it is by public health or medical professionals. This paper examines the experience of being designated as at risk of a serious health condition. Specifically, an examination of the experiences of people with elevated blood cholesterol levels and men with elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels is presented in order to characterise the risk experience. This paper deals primarily with how being at risk symbolically alters health identities, with an introduction to the concept of measured vulnerability. Measured vulnerability refers to the capacity for scientifically-derived statistical measures that are intended to tame randomness and provide certainty in managing risk to, instead, produce uncertainty and anxiety in those to whom the statistic is applied.