At the 2014 TEDxJNJ event I attended, Bennett Levitan of Janssen R&D talked about work he was doing to incorporate patient preference and risk tolerance into pharmaceutical treatment (a review of his research is here). The idea is that from a purely medical and scientific standpoint, we’ve established risk points beyond which we consider a treatment unsafe. More than x% risk of a serious side effect? That treatment will not be offered to patients. And most of the time, that’s the right decision.