The Causal Conundrum: Examining the Medical Legal Disconnect in Toxic Tort Cases From a Cultural Perspective or How the Law Swallowed the Epidemiologist and Grew Long Legs and a Tail
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Authors
Billauer, Barbara Pfeffer
Issue Date
2018-04
Volume
51
Issue
2
Type
Journal Article
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Abstract
INTRODUCTION|Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories have the theme of a particular animal being modified from its original form to its current state by acts of humans or some magical being. No description could come closer to the morphed state epidemiology has assumed in legal parlance than the narrative of Kipling's How the Kangaroo Got its Legs. To paraphrase Kipling's opening lines, 'Not always was the Epidemiologist as now we do behold him, but a different animal with four long legs and a long tail.' The statement is apt. Tail is an epidemiological term that refers to the skewness of a population distribution; if the test population is not normally distributed, it provides a poor basis for extrapolation, either to the plaintiff or the public. Long legs is a colloquial term referring to staying power, such as the hold the present application of epidemiology has had on legal causation, even when perhaps it is unsuited for the task...
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Publisher
Creighton University School of Law