Specific Causation
I was part of a panel discussion last week in San Francisco about what we in the law call "specific causation" - essentially the determination, in an individual case of causal attribution, when the disease in question has been associated with certain risk factors in the general population. It is, I think, a distinction without a difference but until courts move past 20th century science (epidemiology) and on to 21st century science (molecular biology) it's one we'll have to talk about. Here's my PowerPoint from the seminar.
