Peter Hamill, one of the authors of the 1964 Surgeon General's report, said this regarding the epidemiologic criteria: "The most important point is that we propounded and articulated these criteria de novo during the progress of our deliberations. At the time, we did not consider them hewn in stone or intended for all time and all occasions, but as a formal description of how we drew our most important epidemiologic conclusions from the totality of tobacco-related materials extant."
Hill made no secret of where he got the causal criteria. "In fact, Hill's 1965 paper contained only one reference regarding causal criteria, namely the report of the advisory committee." See P. Hamill: Invited commentary: Response to Science article, "Epidemiology faces its limits", Am. J. Epidemiol. 146:527, 1997.