High stakes: Is health's aversion to risk killing us?

It's been 2,500 years since Herodotus uttered the phrase ‘Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks', and yet despite a two-and-a-half-millennia head start, risk and healthcare remain uneasy bedfellows.\r\nThe history of healthcare is littered with pioneers who took extraordinary risks - from Jenner's smallpox vaccine to Curie's pioneering work with radiation. But with medical litigation on the rise across Europe, have we become too risk-averse to usher in a new era of medicine?