Re:California jury says Bayer must pay $2B to couple in Roun...
by thaumasiotes on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @12:36AM
(#19906810)
You have situations like the following:
- The age-adjusted baseline rate of a particular type of cancer is, say, 1%.
- An age-adjusted 2.5% of people in an afflicted community have been diagnosed with this type of cancer. This is a huge increase above baseline.
- By implication, of people in the community with a diagnosis of this type of cancer, 40% of them would have cancer anyway for reasons unrelated to whatever is being sued over, and 60% of them got it "because" of whatever the problem is.
It isn't possible to make any distinction between those groups at the level of an individual case. There's no difference in the cancer.
- The age-adjusted baseline rate of a particular type of cancer is, say, 1%.
- An age-adjusted 2.5% of people in an afflicted community have been diagnosed with this type of cancer. This is a huge increase above baseline.
- By implication, of people in the community with a diagnosis of this type of cancer, 40% of them would have cancer anyway for reasons unrelated to whatever is being sued over, and 60% of them got it "because" of whatever the problem is.
It isn't possible to make any distinction between those groups at the level of an individual case. There's no difference in the cancer.