Prevention and Torts: The Role of Litigation in Injury Control

Abstract

Those who study, teach, and practice in the field of injury epidemiology and prevention often compare injuries to diseases; to do so enhances the understanding that injuries, like diseases, have etiologic agents that act within particular environments to affect predictable hosts. It is important to stress the scientific underpinnings of injury control, so that injuries will not continue to be seen as randomly occurring events that strike the unlucky, who have little or no preventive opportunity available to them. Those within the field argue that injury prevention, like disease prevention, when approached with the proper scientific method, holds the prospect of saving thousands of lives per year in the United States.The comparison of injuries to diseases, however, can distract attention from some crucial aspects of injury prevention. Infectious disease control is the story of man's battle with living organisms that often do their damage to hosts at the cellular or sub-cellular level. The pathways of those diseases can be difficult to discern, and some mysteries are yet to be solved. Injuries, on the other hand, do their initial damage on a more visible level. Their etiologic events are often apparent, and do not require epidemiologic or biochemical detective work for an understanding of the causes of injury.