This would be particularly mysterious if one had an impact view of causal interaction, as would anyone influenced by atomism, for whom the paradigm of causation is like two billiard balls cannoning off one another.
The criteria proposed by Hill (1965), which he derived from the list prepared in the US Surgeon General's report Smoking and Health (1964), to interpret the epidemiologic results on lung cancer risk from tobacco smoking, have been used as a paradigm for causation in observational epidemiology.
There is widespread use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in Ghana, driven by cultural consideration and paradigm to disease causation.
Whether an individual uses CAM or not is related to social and cultural considerations, including paradigm to disease causation.
A vicious cycle of late presentation emanating from paradigm to disease causation leading to diminished chances of cure and therefore reduced belief in the efficacy of conventional therapies ensues and increases subscription to CAM.
Majority of patients in the developing world including Ghana are diagnosed at a stage when most conventional therapies fail; this is a result of the absence of screening and educational programmes, as well as paradigm to disease causation, others also recur after varying periods of remission and majority become incurable with conventional therapies.
In this study we sought to establish whether there is concurrent use of CAM and main stream medicine, prevalence of CAM use in cancer patients, the kinds of CAM used, the potential influence of CAM use on compliance to treatment, side effects of CAM, and predictors of CAM use in a setting where there is a changing paradigm to disease causation.
We feel compelled to fill the voids in our observation, whether it is with narratives of immortality or scientific paradigms that explain causation and cessation.
Nevertheless, the paradigm of medieval Black Death causation (bubonic/pneumonic plague) adopted around the turn of the 20th century remains the dominant etiologic theory.
We have linked legal and scientific aspects of causation using the United States and the EU as paradigms to help public decision making to limit chemical exposures, in particular EDs (BPA being prototypical).
