Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and causes of disease in mankind. It makes use of what are called observational studies, so named because they do not involve creating experimental data, but rather assembling and examining what data exist. This is usually done by comparing rates of disease in exposed and unexposed populations. Observational studies thus take advantage of natural variation in exposures to tease out or test causal relations. Below I describe in broad outline the methods used in two important kinds of epidemiological studies that have appeared in law cases and some of the key issues that arise in making causal inferences from such studies.
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Notes
- 1.
See p. 16.
- 2.
Allen v. United States, 588 F. Supp. 247 (D. Utah 1984), rev’d, 816 F. 2d 1417 (10th Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 108 S. Ct. 694 (1988).
- 3.
Pennington vs. Aerojet-General Corp., Case No. 00SS02622, Cal. Superior Ct., Sacramento County.
- 4.
A description of the epidemiologic studies in the case and the response of defendants’ experts may be found in F. Dominici, S. Kramer & A. Zambelli-Weiner, “The Role of Epidemiology in the Law: A Toxic Tort Litigation Case,” 7 Law, Probability and Risk 15 (2008).
- 5.
In re Ephedra Products Liability Lit., 393 F. Supp. 2d 181 (S.D.N.Y. 2005).
- 6.
Manko vs. United States, 636 F. Supp. 1419 (W.D. Mo. 1986), aff’d in part, 830 F.2d 831 (8th Cir. 1987); D.A. Freedman & P.B. Stark, “The Swine Flu Vaccine and Guillaine-Barré Syndrome: A Case Study in Relative Risk and Specific Causation,” 23 Evaluation Review 619 (1999).
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Finkelstein, M.O. (2009). Epidemiology. In: Basic Concepts of Probability and Statistics in the Law. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/b105519_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/b105519_9
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