The bottom line is that people, and by extension governments, are very poor at judging risks.  The distortions in our prioritization reflects underlying cognitive bias, and our existing biases are greatly amplified by the mass media.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases</a>