[See also: her testimony on the issue of synergy on pages 1725, 1731-1734, 1737-1739].
- The Haifa District Court rejected the synergy thesis, which was raised by the applicants' experts there, as well as in the proceeding here, stating emphatically, inter alia:
The theory of synergy ("cocktail") raised by Dr. Shalita, with the help of which the plaintiffs try to establish the existence of a causal link between exposure and the disease – which is not dependent on the material, does not depend on the type of exposure, does not depend on the scope of the exposure, and does not depend on the specific disease in which each plaintiff suffers – the plaintiffs have also failed to establish. According to this theory, since there were a number of substances known to be carcinogenic in the waters of the anchorage, these substances mixed with each other to form a "cocktail" whose effect on the plaintiffs' body was synergistic, i.e., much higher than the effect of the individual substances [page 24 above].
In the interrogation of some of the experts, it was clarified that the interaction between several substances can lead to a synergistic effect, can lead to an additive effect (i.e., exposure to both substances increases the risk by the same amount as the amount of increased risk of each substance separately), can be neutral and can be antagonistic (i.e., exposure to both substances actually leads to a reduction in the overall risk). Prof. Friedman clarified this (pp. 17031-17032 of the minutes of the hearing of June 7, 2009). Prof. Rybak and Dr. Wiener also argued that the effect of the interaction between different substances can be antagonistic and not just synergistic (p. 18313 of the minutes of the hearing of November 8, 2009, p. 16570 of the minutes of the hearing of April 19, 2009, p. 16 of the experience of moving the venue of Dr . Wiener's discussion). This was also argued by Prof. Sellor (p. 17272 of the transcript of the hearing of June 21, 2009).
Therefore, in the absence of any reference to the effect of the combination of substances that were in the waters of the fishing dock in Kishon, the cocktail theory is only a theory. In addition, the defendants' argument that if this theory were to exist, a necessary result of the existence of synergy would have been the appearance of a pronounced excess of morbidity among the Kishon fishermen, and the fact that in our case no excess morbidity was proven also negates the "cocktail" theory