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Environmental health risk assessment is increasingly being used in the development of environmental health policies, public health decision making, the establishment of environmental regulations, and research planning. The credibility of risk assessment depends, to a large extent, on the strength of the scientific evidence on which it is based. It is, therefore, imperative that the processes and methods used to evaluate the evidence and estimate health risks are clear, explicit, and based on valid epidemiological theory and practice. Epidemiological Evidence for Environmental Health Risk Assessment is a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline document. The primary target audiences of the guidelines are expert review groups that WHO (or other organizations) might convene in the future to evaluate epidemiological evidence on the health effects of environmental factors. These guidelines identify a set of processes and general approaches to assess available epidemiological information in a clear, consistent, and explicit manner. The guidelines should also help in the evaluation of epidemiological studies with respect to their ability to support risk assessment and, consequently, risk management. Conducting expert reviews according to such explicit guidelines would make health risk assessment and subsequent risk management and risk communication processes more readily understood and likely to be accepted by policymakers and the public. It would also make the conclusions reached by reviews more readily acceptable as a basis for future WHO guidelines and other recommendations, and would provide a more rational basis for setting priorities for future research.

Courts of last resort now seldom reverse a ruling on the competency of witnesses.' Convinced, and rightly so, that they cannot learn from the record all the circumstances which influenced the decision below, they usually let it stand, even when the transcript alone might suggest another conclusion. Trial courts, in their turn, to a greater extent than formerly prefer to admit the evidence of infants, insane people, and mental defectives, and leave the jury to estimate its value. Perhaps this is because exclusion has heretofore worked particular hardship in prosecutions for crimes against children and the insane, where the only evidence available was that of the victim.2 Now these aggrieved individuals may testify even when the gist of the action, as in statutory rape,3 or the title of the action, as where a "lunatic" sues by his next friend,4 indicates their infirmity. The infirmity alone does not render them incompetent. In all jurisdictions witnesses must show that they possess

Ever since the adoption of the original New York Code of i848 it has been a fundamental requirement of code pleading that every action should be prosecuted in the name of the real party in interest, with an exception in favor of an executor or administrator, a trustee of an express trust or a person expressly authorized by statute., The framers of the Code, in explaining the occasion for the provision, referred to the common law prohibition against the assignment of a "thing in action" and stated this to be the condition of the parties: "If the assignee sues at law, he is turned out of court, and if the assignor sues in equity, he is turned out also." They added: "The true rule undoubtedly is that which prevails, in the courts of equity, that he who has the right, is the person to pursue the remedy. We have adopted that rule."}2