How could the regulation of such things as pharmaceuticals and pesticides be a bad thing? How could banning products on safety grounds be evil? How could international cooperation on regulating potentially dangerous products go wrong? In Regulating Risk, Rebecca Perlman suggests one very important way in which regulation can serve nefarious purposes—in particular, the purposes of major corporations.

Imagine that a pharmaceutical company has a profitable drug whose patent protection is about to expire, after which cheaper generics will replace the branded version. What is a poor corporation to do? Hmm…perhaps it can come out with a brand-new variant of the drug, with brand-new patent protection. And, for good measure, it can convince regulators that the old drug, now about to go generic, is not up to current regulatory standards and should be banned. Clever! And, Perlman shows, a common strategy of companies that find themselves in this position.

Perlman argues that the principal tool corporations have in their arsenal to pursue these goals is information. Products are extremely complicated, and regulators cannot possibly be testing all products all the time. The innovating company can itself carry out, and provide the regulator with, a retroactive precautionary review, making available information that suggests that the long-ava