Values and health risks: An editorial

This special issue is the second in a four-part series Health Care Through the ‘Lens of Risk’ focussing on risk categorisation, valuing, expecting and time-framing, respectively, and published or to be published in 2012–2013. The present editorial introduces the issue of risk valuing in relation to an interview-based article and five substantial research papers (one appearing in a subsequent issue (14.6) due to space limitations). It will be argued that the notion of ‘adverse event’ projects negative value onto events themselves, directing attention away from the observer's active judgemental role. The relocation of value judgements in the perspectives of social actors allows their potential variability to be more clearly recognised. This issue will be explored in the editorial which introduces papers concerned with hard drug consumption, self-hurting, the community rehabilitation of forensic mental health service users who have committed serious offences against other persons, the treatment of anal cancer and the perspectives of young pregnant women. A common theme linking these papers is the positive valuing of risk-taking officially designated as unacceptable.