Brennan T A
Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
Ann Intern Med. 1987 Nov;107(5):741-7. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-107-5-741.
Judges and juries are increasingly being asked to settle questions about disease caused by hazardous products. With the growth of litigation on toxic substances and unsafe products, more and more courts must wrestle with the complicated scientific proof of the relation between exposure and disease or injury. This proof frequently involves the use of probabilistic evidence in the form of statistical tests and epidemiologic studies. Anglo-American law relies on deductive notions of causation and is suspicious of probabilistic evidence of causation. As a result, court decisions of hazardous substance cases are sometimes based on a confused understanding of the critical causal connection. Physicians who testify in such cases, either as the treating doctor or as expert witnesses, must be aware of the court's difficulty with probabilistic evidence. In addition, physicians must state clearly the role of such evidence in the identification of a hazardous substance as the cause of a disease or injury.
法官和陪审团越来越多地被要求解决有关危险产品所致疾病的问题。随着有毒物质和不安全产品诉讼的增加，越来越多的法院必须应对暴露与疾病或伤害之间关系的复杂科学证据。这种证据常常涉及以统计测试和流行病学研究形式出现的概率性证据。英美法系依赖因果关系的演绎概念，并且对因果关系的概率性证据持怀疑态度。因此，有害物质案件的法院判决有时基于对关键因果联系的混乱理解。在这类案件中出庭作证的医生，无论是作为主治医生还是专家证人，都必须意识到法院在概率性证据方面存在的困难。此外，医生必须清楚说明此类证据在认定有害物质为疾病或伤害原因方面所起的作用。
