Tobacco litigation. Issues for public health and public policy.
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Over the past two decades, courts have struggled with technical and scientific evidence regarding the causal connection between exposure to hazardous substances and disease states. Judges' and juries' inability to understand the uncertainty inherent in toxicological evidence of causation has led to decisions which are incorrect from a scientific point of view. These problems are exacerbated by the "battle of experts," which is the traditional method for presenting scientific evidence to courts. Alternative means for presenting scientific evidence to courts, such as court-appointed experts and use of panels of expert scientists, are theoretically superior to the existing adversarial process. A Federal Judicial Science Board could coordinate the use of court-appointed experts and science panels and make them more attractive alternatives to courts struggling with issues of toxic causation.
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Based on limited research, clinical and forensic experience and observations, factors hypothesized to be potentially useful in forensic evaluation of claims of decades-delayed discovery of childhood sexual abuse are delineated. Factors considered include: (1) alleged victim factors, (2) memory factors, (3) therapist/examiner factors, (4) external influences on the abuse account, (5) evidential patterns. Differences among a limited sample of cases seen by the author are described. Present knowledge does not provide a basis for reliable determination of whether a specific recollection is true or false, based only upon the claimant's account. At this time, there is no empirically validated method for discriminating valid from invalid cases. Experts testifying for either side must exercise caution and restraint as it may be premature and even unethical in many cases to propound opinions about the validity or invalidity of the memories.
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By its very nature, practice and intended applications, the profession of occupational toxicology has individual and collective responsibilities related to the design, conduct, interpretation and extrapolation of laboratory and controlled human clinical studies in order to determine the potential for industrial xenobiotics to produce adverse effects. The implications for health-related adverse effects in the workplace, and in the domestic and general environment carries many and various responsibilities for the toxicologist which are related to multiple and wide-ranging ethical issues. This review presents and discusses some of the major areas where the occupational toxicologist may experience potential ethical problems related to the conduct of routine professional activities. Emphasis is placed on the design, conduct, interpretation and reporting of laboratory studies; animal welfare; regulatory activities; human clinical volunteer studies; roles and responsibilities in defining workplace safety and protective measures; malpractices in various disciplines and work practices; misconduct in publication; and codes of ethical behavior.
In order to understand patterns of respondents on validity and clinical scales, this study analyzed archival Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2s (MMPI-2s) produced by 192 women and 14 men who initiated legal claims of ongoing emotional harm related to workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. The MMPI-2s were administered as a part of a comprehensive psychiatric forensic evaluation of the claimants' current psychological condition. All validity and clinical scale scores were manually entered into the computer, and codetype and cluster analyses were obtained. Among the women, 28% produced a "normal limits" profile, providing no MMPI-2 support for their claims of ongoing emotional distress. Cluster analysis of the validity scales of the remaining profiles produced four distinctive clusters of profiles representing different approaches to the test items.