was to create a Framework for Environmental Health Risk Management, with "stakeholders" at the center of our scheme.13 We sought to get interested and affected (or potentially affected) laypeople engaged as early as possible in the process of setting the context and guiding technical assessments, before experts decided which questions needed to be addressed and which would be neglected. We held monthly hearings throughout the country over two years. Our experience was so compelling that we published a short volume for laypersons that gave examples of real situations in which public engagement had been active (sometimes in a positive way and sometimes not), and we illustrated how our framework effectively helped translate into risk communication at the community level. We found that laypeople are often impressive in their ability to evaluate and balance certain risks against other risks, risks against benefits, risks against costs, and benefit against costs. Also, to our pleasant surprise, we discovered that non-scientists often suggested practical, less extreme, and less costly ways of achieving the desired protection. The public clearly influences the national priorities for life sciences research. For decades, the advocacy of special health interests drove Congress to create new institutes at NIH and authorize special funding increases. In the late 1990s, NIH Director Harold Varmus and Research lAmerica leaders Paul Rogers and M ary Woolley led the campaign to increase support for a broad array of research related to the life sciences, not just at NIH, and not just for particular diseases or institutes. Members of Congress and others who were able to overcome narrow special-interest advocacy should be commended for recognizing that advances for any particular disease may
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