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Yes, it is intrinsic in the way the Vaccine Court is set up. In any other type of trial, the accused is assumed innocent unless proven guilty. That is not the case with Vaccine Court:
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"If the first symptom of these injuries/conditions occurs within the listed time periods, it is presumed that the vaccine was the cause of the injury or condition unless another cause is found. For example, if you received the tetanus vaccines and had a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) within 4 hours after receiving the vaccine, then it is presumed that the tetanus vaccine caused the injury if no other cause is found. "
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http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/table.htm
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So in vax court, the vaxes are assumed guilty unless proven innocent. Usually the burden of proof lies with the prosecutor. You have to PROVE that the accused commited the crime. In vaccine court that's not the case, obviously. You only have to prove that there's nothing else that caused the condition(s) in question. And, like I said earlier, you are still finanacially compensated for suffering side effects from vaccines. I don't know of any other drug where you're compensated for experiencing a known, published side effect.
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Except, how many reactions actually happen within a few hours of the vaccine? What if it happens a day or two later? Or longer? Odds of chronic arthritis settling in within 42 days of MMR, or even being diagnosed within that time period, seem obscenely low.
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How hard is it to find another cause for the reaction? Doesn't seem like it would be too hard for doctors to say that the reaction could have been caused by any number of other things. Doesn't say that another cause "must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt", or any real standard.
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No one automatically wins anything in the justice system. Most personal injury or medical malpractice cases take at least three to five years of litigation. Â No court just hands out rulings in favor of the plaintiffs without a full disclosure of the facts of the case. Â The wheels of the tort system of justice grind slowly, but they do grind finely. Â If you think it is fine for people to be damaged by a drug prescribed for them by a trusted, trained, licensed professional, then just what can anyone say?
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If one reads about the early polio vaccines that caused polio - see Paul Offit's Cutter Incident, for one, - one knows that the tort system and product liability law put the companies that made dangerous vaccines out of business immediately, so that the less dangerous ones and more effective ones stayed on the market (I do not agree, but anyway). Â With the VAERS/VICP system in place, there is no incentive for vaccine companies to make safer vaccines. Â There is only the profit incentive for vaccine and drug companies. Â Screw safety! Â That was the basis for the minority opinion of the Bruesewitz case.
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Frankly, I do not take drugs, including asprin or anything else one would care to mention as a drug. Â I have learned from the mistakes of others. Â Â I am old enough to be a DES daughter. Â It took a full generation for the dangers of that wonder drug to be revealed, and the only reason the results were discovered and connected to DES is because the side effects were so obvious and unusual. Â I had contemporaries in high school, college and the workforce who suffered from the effects of this wonder drug. Â Â Some had a hysterectomy before age 21. Â The couple of them who managed to have children, are shocked that their children too have the abnormalities that they received from DES prenatally. Â There was never a double blind, scientific study that showed that DES worked, yet doctors continued to prescribe it for a variety of conditions for decades with no reason to back it up. Â Do you think these DES victims were able to read the prescribing information before they received the drug through their placentas and umbilical cords? Â No informed consent here. Â And no court can repay them for the damage done to them.
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There have been successful lawsuits for damage done b/c of DES. We actually read the case in law school, in torts class.
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There are plenty of lawsuits that have been filed against drug companies and the plaintiffs have won some sense of justice in a reasonable time line. Â Radium boxes, breast implants, the Dalkon Shield, Yaz, Accutane, thalidomide, bendectin, the 1976 swine flu vaccine, and many wrongful deaths from erroneous prescribing, poor surgical outcomes or wrongful diagnoses. Â If alternative practitioners had a track record like that, they would be on death row.Â
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Death row is only available in Criminal Cases - and I think it should be gotten rid of as a violation of the 8th amendment. It's not an available punishment in civil cases, which is what med mal cases, and vax cases are. I'm sure its possible that there have been cases of dr's being held criminally liable, but I wouldn't think it was any more likely for alternative practitioners than for modern ones.Â
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I'm going to disagree with you on that one. I think it is far more likely that an alternative practitioner would be held criminally liable than a medical doctor, assuming both are within the standard of care of their disciplines. The reason is that medical doctors who are practicing within the standard of care for medical doctors will easily be able to show that they had valid reasons to believe that what they were doing was in their patient's best interest. It will be very hard to show any wrongdoing. But it would be much harder for an alternative practitioner to convince a jury that they had valid reasons to believe that what they were doing was in their patient's best interest. Showing intention to kill (generally a requirement for murder) might still be difficult, but showing negligence (generally a requirement for manslaughter) might be fairly easy. The standard of practice, safety, efficacy, etc., etc., is simply better documented in the case of medical doctors.
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There's also an easy alternative for punishing doctors who make serious mistakes, which is to revoke their licenses. For unlicensed practitioners who make serious mistakes, the state may have no way to stop them from continuing to practice other than a criminal action.
My point is missed.Â
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Had practitioners of an alternative healing had the track record of modern medicine, those persons would be in jail. Â Midwives have gone to jail, for doing what midwives have done since the dawn of time; now it is "practicing medicine". Chiropractors cannot even recommend an asprin pill or a vitamin. Â Accupuncturists need to be careful how they word their recommendations. Yet parents are bullied without informed consent or advice into injudicious multiple vaccinations when their child may be sick or had a reaction to the last round of vaccines. When a baby dies or is permanently injured from the injudicious use of obstetrical meds, interventive practices or from a listed reaction to the "required" hepatitis B vaccine as Baby Ian did, that is "an act of G!d". How can that be acceptable? Â
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http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=937 Â Should his parents deserve compensation?
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I suspect that we live in a medical culture wherein medicine is a protected belief.
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I suspect that we live in a medical culture wherein medicine is a protected belief.
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Medicine isn't just a belief, though. It's a belief that is continually tested and that continually changes in response to new evidence. So, to me, it makes sense that people who believe what the evidence says and act upon that belief would be protected from an accusation of wrongdoing.Â
On closer examination, the Vaccine Injury Table is so limiting in scope and time frame it is almost a joke.
The table is only "limiting" in the sense that unlisted injuries require demonstration of a plausible causal connection, still a lesser standard than one would encounter in a regular civil action (and "plausible" includes "even though nobody's heard of it before and there's no evidence that it actually exists").
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http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=937 Â Should his parents deserve compensation?
If, as that accounting indicates, he was mistakenly given an antibiotic that he was known to be allergic to, it sounds like these parents have a great case in state or federal court, as well as a great case in Vaccine Court. As for whether they deserve money, my answer has nothing to do with who, if anyone, was responsible for this tragic outcome. Personally, I think they deserve a healthy, happy little boy in their lives. They don't get that, and that's horrible, but I'm not sure why that means that they "deserve" money. If there was wrongdoing on the part of the hospital (if, for instance, the family wasn't given the information sheet before vaccinating, or if their son's condition was not treated appropriately), I hope that they do sue and I hope that they win. That's not about what the parents deserve but about what the hospital deserves.Â
The table is only "limiting" in the sense that unlisted injuries require demonstration of a plausible causal connection, still a lesser standard than one would encounter in a regular civil action (and "plausible" includes "even though nobody's heard of it before and there's no evidence that it actually exists").
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It is, IMO, far too limiting for anyone to post about as a saving grace to vaccine damage. And if it were truly so easy to prove vaccine damage, there would be an insane amount of people filing for damages. Our civil court are flooded with litigants looking to be compensated for ridiculous things (McDonald's hot coffee). If this court were so easy to actually have a ruling in your favor, it would be the most popular to make money.
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Stating that the court uses a lesser standard is pretty irrelevant when you are trying to convince a pro-vaccine judge that a vaccine caused harm. They simply don't buy the theory and throw the case out.
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You can use all the quotation marks you want, but it isn't as easy to get a ruling in your favor as you make it out to be.
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If, as that accounting indicates, he was mistakenly given an antibiotic that he was known to be allergic to, it sounds like these parents have a great case in state or federal court, as well as a great case in Vaccine Court. As for whether they deserve money, my answer has nothing to do with who, if anyone, was responsible for this tragic outcome. Personally, I think they deserve a healthy, happy little boy in their lives. They don't get that, and that's horrible, but I'm not sure why that means that they "deserve" money. If there was wrongdoing on the part of the hospital (if, for instance, the family wasn't given the information sheet before vaccinating, or if their son's condition was not treated appropriately), I hope that they do sue and I hope that they win. That's not about what the parents deserve but about what the hospital deserves.Â
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Actually, when it comes to who deserves what, there are different approaches our court system takes.
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Does giving parents money compensate them for the loss of a child? No. But that is the way our court system awards those who have suffered. When plaintiffs "deserve" something, they are given money- even when that is not really what the deserve.
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You can also look at the negative consequences that the hospital deserves. Is it necessarily a monetary damage? No. But again, that is how our court system punishes wrong-doers- with punitive damages in the form of money.
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Both the hospital and the parents deserve something. In this country, what they deserve is measured in dollars.
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First, if you're going to characterize Liebeck as ridiculous, I suggest that you be particular about the problems you see in the decision. Second, the suggestion that there should be an "insane amount of people" filing for putative vaccine damage relies on two assumptions: (1) that I asserted it was "so easy," and (2) that there exists such an insane amount of people with anything remotely resembling a vaccine injury to start with. The first point is false, in that all I stated was that it's easier than a regular civil action [ed.: even at it's most difficult]. The second is unsupported, and the fact that failing to prevail in vaccine court does not prevent a recovery of legal fees tends to suggest that the venue is operating at about potential saturation.
First, if you're going to characterize Liebeck as ridiculous, I suggest that you be particular about the problems you see in the decision. Second, the suggestion that there should be an "insane amount of people" filing for putative vaccine damage relies on two assumptions: (1) that I asserted it was "so easy," and (2) that there exists such an insane amount of people with anything remotely resembling a vaccine injury to start with. The first point is false, in that all I stated was that it's easier than a regular civil action [ed.: even at it's most difficult]. The second is unsupported, and the fact that failing to prevail in vaccine court does not prevent a recovery of legal fees tends to suggest that the venue is operating at about potential saturation.
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You misunderstood my post entirely.
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I am not characterizing the decision in Liebeck as ridiculous. What I was saying is that people (in general) sue for ridiculous things in civil court. If there are so many people suing for ridiculous things in civil court to make some extra cash, it stands to reason that there would be even more people suing for ridiculous things in a court with even easier standards and deeper pockets to recover from. Since that is not the case, the vaccine court standards are probably not less stringent in practice, even if they are on paper.
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I am not characterizing the decision in Liebeck as ridiculous. What I was saying is that people (in general) sue for ridiculous things in civil court. If there are so many people suing for ridiculous things in civil court to make some extra cash, it stands to reason that there would be even more people suing for ridiculous things in a court with even easier standards and deeper pockets to recover from. Since that is not the case, the vaccine court standards are probably not less stringent in practice, even if they are on paper.
Your only example was Liebeck, which you now say is not ridiculous. The argument seems to be that the vaccine court couldn't actually have lower standards of evidence and proof--despite the clear rules of the court, official practice guidelines, case history, and circumscribed powers of the special masters--than a regular action because there aren't enough... what? Filings? Immediate dismissals? Compared with? There's nothing for reason to stand on in the first place.
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Actually, when it comes to who deserves what, there are different approaches our court system takes.
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Does giving parents money compensate them for the loss of a child? No. But that is the way our court system awards those who have suffered. When plaintiffs "deserve" something, they are given money- even when that is not really what the deserve.
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You can also look at the negative consequences that the hospital deserves. Is it necessarily a monetary damage? No. But again, that is how our court system punishes wrong-doers- with punitive damages in the form of money.
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Both the hospital and the parents deserve something. In this country, what they deserve is measured in dollars.
No, the court system awards money to people who have been legally wronged in violation of a legal duty and suffered compensable injuries as a result, not to people who deserve things.
They DID have a healthy, happy little boy in their lives. Â Their trust in modern medicine took that away from them. Â This is where informed consent comes in.
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It doesn't sound like he was ever healthy. And while it does sound like medical mistakes were made and it does sound like the family did not get the information they should have, we obviously do not have all of the facts. One fact I do not have is whether, had this child's care been different, his outcome would have been significantly different.Â
No, the court system awards money to people who have been legally wronged in violation of a legal duty and suffered compensable injuries as a result, not to people who deserve things.
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Yes, I was referring to legally deserving things, not morally. And when courts determine that someone deserves something (legally, since that's what courts do), money is almost always what is awarded.
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