ABSTRACT
Traditional epidemiology is concerned with environmental causes of disease and can be thought of as environmental epidemiology. Genetic epidemiology investigates genetic causes of disease, with the new subdiscipline of epigenetic epidemiology acting as an interface between environmental and genetic epidemiology. The false dichotomy of nature versus nurture presents the effects of the environment and genes as mutually exclusive, but this is an unproductive approach. There are only a few strictly environmental or genetic conditions, and most diseases are contributed to by both environmental and genetic risk factors.
