Science in the Courtroom Program 4: Basic Principles of Toxicology

Federal Judicial Center ava20966vnb1.1 -- 4049-V/01 (2001) Science in the Courtroom Program 4: Basic Principles of Toxicology This is the fourth of six programs in the FJC's Science in the Courtroom series. After an introduction by Justice Stephen Breyer, Dr. Bernard D. Goldstein, Chairman of the Department of Environmental & Community Medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, discusses basic principles of toxicology. Judges and juries are often presented with toxicological evidence as the basis of an expert's opinion on causation in toxic tort cases. Dr. Goldstein explains basic toxicological research methods, the extrapolation of study results from animal and cell research to humans, how toxicologists identify factors demonstrating an association between exposure to a compound and the risk of disease, and factors that may indicate a causal association between an individual's exposure to an agent and the onset of a disease. Dr. Goldstein is a coauthor of the "Reference Guide on Toxicology" in the Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (2d ed.).