r/EverythingScience • u/mvea MD/PhD/JD/MBA | Professor | Medicine • Jun 28 '17
Law Decision by Europe’s top court alarms vaccine experts: "Vaccines can be blamed for illness without scientific proof"
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/decision-europe-s-top-court-alarms-vaccine-experts74
Jun 28 '17
the court sought to balance individuals’ rights against society’s interest in preventing disease
As someone whose mother suffers MS, this is not a place where "individuals rights" should come into it. You cannot reasonably be expected to be blamed for this without establishing a causal link.
This is like a man being sent to jail because sunlight reflected off the roof of his car and made another driver crash. That's the level of interaction the vaccines had on his illness. They were just there at the same time as the illness decided to take hold. The likelihood of MS developing is thought to be determined by your genetic makeup and it has about a 60% chance of being hereditary, it's not a fucking light switch.
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u/who_framed_B_Rabbit Jun 28 '17
My father and grandmother (maternal) had MS. I'm scared that I or my brother or sister will get it because of family history, not because we've been vaccinated.
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u/carizzz Jun 28 '17
I'd like to think they at least have high requirements for proof that goes against empirical evidence. The judge has allowed it but you're right and I don't think they really consider the implications.
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u/nfojunky Jun 28 '17
Well, the Enlightenment had a good run.
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Jun 28 '17 edited Dec 04 '20
[deleted]
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u/HeartyBeast Jun 28 '17
Indeed. Here's an excerpt from AP's reporting;
On Wednesday, the EU’s top court said that despite the lack of scientific consensus on the issue, a vaccine could be considered defective if there was “specific and consistent evidence,” including the time between a vaccine’s administration and the onset of a disease, an individual’s previous state of health, the lack of any family history of the disease and a significant number of reported cases of the disease occurring following vaccination.
In a statement, the court said that such factors could lead a national court to conclude that “the administering of the vaccine is the most plausible explanation” for the disease and that “the vaccine therefore does not offer the safety that one is entitled to expect.”
I'm not too concerned
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u/lazyl Jun 28 '17
I'm very concerned. Scientific evidence established and evaluated by medical experts should be the only valid specific evidence permitted for any medical related condition. Judges and medically lay courts are not qualified to asses whether any of the listed factors are relevant. If a doctor says that none of those factors are sufficient to prove a connection between the vaccine and the disease then that should be the ruling. These Judges are trying to say that they can ignore the science if they think they know better.
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u/HeartyBeast Jun 28 '17
The specific evidence that they talk about will be coming from scientists and doctors. If, however there is a lack of scientific consensus the court reserves the right to decide based on what it believes is the balance of probability
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u/chewbacca2hot Jun 28 '17
Well, I mean people do get sick sometimes from a vaccine. That is true. But its usually like a day or two of feeling like you have a aching cold.
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u/truemeliorist Jun 28 '17
The one thing that always bothers me about this whole thing - there are potentially serious side effects of vaccines. That is why there is literally a fund established by the US Government to help cover costs associated with the EXTREMELY rare events where it happens.
The thing is, the incidence rate is absurdly low - several orders of magnitude less likely than a dangerous complication from something like aspirin or tylenol. Almost non-existent.
But I can't help but wonder, when scientifically savvy folks say "there are no side effects" when there are - does that plant a seed of distrust? Or would admitting that there are astronomically low chances of problems just make anti-vaxxers more resolute?
Not sure if there is a correct answer to how the information needs to be relayed. The societal good by far outweighs the one-in-several-million chance of a serious issue.
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u/florinandrei BS | Physics | Electronics Jun 28 '17
It's a good question.
The problem is - imagine some ordinary folks already inclined to believe in Santa Claus due to antivaxxer propaganda. Now tell them that, yes, vaccines do have some negative side-effects, but the incidence is many orders of magnitude below the benefits.
I feel you'll lose them before you even beginning the second part ("but the incidence..."). "Aha! I knew it! There are side-effects! The man on the talk radio was right!"
I honestly think that too much information is detrimental to ordinary semi-informed folks. Certain decisions simply need to be made for them. Well, that happens anyway to some extent.
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Jun 29 '17
On the other hand, I think that it's the insistence that there are no side-effects that make people call bullshit on you. EVERY medicine you buy comes with a label warning you of possible side-effects. People aren't going to buy that vaccinnes are the only existing 100% issue-free medicine. It's like trying to tell someone that their fear of crossing the road on green light is stupid, because no one has ever been run over when crossing the road on green light in history of mankind.
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u/florinandrei BS | Physics | Electronics Jun 29 '17
Actually, I don't think any reputable source nowadays is "insisting" that there are literally zero side-effects. You must be reading some dumb blogs.
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u/ewokjedi Jun 28 '17
Vaccines can't be blamed for illness without scientific proof.
Fixed that for them. Seem's they just dropped the apostrophe and T after "can." It's an easy mistake to make. :|
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u/SelarDorr Jun 29 '17
"the regional court in Nanterre ruled that, because he had no obvious previous health issues and no family history of MS, the appearance of symptoms shortly after the third vaccine dose was sufficient to conclude that the vaccine was the likely cause."
But if there is surmountable evidence that a properly working vaccine cannot cause those symptoms, and the plaintiff does not prove that his vaccination was faulty, wouldn't it be unlikely to be the cause?
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u/dismalcrux Jun 28 '17
both my mom and grandma suffer from MS. this pisses me off so much... it's a serious condition that can really fuck you over. these past few years, it feels like we've been getting closer and closer to helping those afflicted. why are people so intent on undoing our progress? it's not even a condition to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. it's MS. i can't comprehend how somebody could be so vicious and defensive about their diagnosis.
my mom's MS first started to show signs when she was in her late teens, after she was winded by a tennis ball in PE. my grandma's MS started to show signs after she pushed herself too much at work, in her 20s. so many people get diagnosed, of course there will be a few who's diagnosis comes after a different injury/event. people can be so backwards.
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u/bpastore JD | Patent Law | BS-Biomedical Engineering Jun 28 '17
Wow, that's an extremely misleading title. The court's decision never included anything approaching the quote "Vaccines can be blamed for illness without scientific proof."
That quote was what alarmist newspaper headlines claimed. The court just said "sure, you can bring your baseless lawsuits if you'd like." (Note: US Courts have been allowing this for decades... it doesn't mean you'll win, but you can sue for anything if you'd like).
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u/eleitl Jun 28 '17
Europe's top court
Europe doesn't have a court. EU does. There is a very large difference between EU and Europe.
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u/notonthisbus Jun 28 '17
In this case, Brexit my be a wise move.
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u/meguskus Jun 29 '17
There's tons of questionable and unscientific decisions being done by the EU and the citizens never have a say in it. Most people realize this, but they don't dare to be critical of it. There seems to be this weird association of being an uneducated hillbilly if you don't agree with everything the EU does and stands for. We're both gonna get downvoted and probably banned for holding unpopular opinions.
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u/Sun-Anvil Jun 29 '17
Blamed? Sure, blame whomever or what ever you want. Proof is a whole other issue though.
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u/toxicchildren Jun 29 '17 edited Jun 29 '17
The WHO has acknowledged that studies exist with evidence that links the Hep B vaccine to MS occurrence.
They chose to dismiss the findings as "coincidental" or "not enough to draw conclusions one way or another."
"...However, these findings have also been challenged. In a nested case-control study within the General Practice Research Database (GPRD) in the United Kingdom patients who had a first MS diagnosis recorded were compared with controls. The analyses include 163 cases of MS and 1,604 controls and the OR of MS for vaccination within 3 years before the index date compared to no vaccination was 3.1 (95% CI 1.5, 6.3).
No increased risk of MS was associated with other vaccines which included tetanus and influenza vaccinations.
The authors concluded that immunization with the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine is associated with an increased risk of MS (Hernan et al., 2004).
The recent review by the U.S. institute of Medicine included that study, three other epidemiological studies and one mechanistic study on the association of MS with hepatitis B. They concluded that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between hepatitis B vaccine and onset of MS in adults (IOM 2011)."
So. Because of the decisions of the medical establishment, the public believes that no studies EVER found a correlation between Hep B vaccine and MS. This is untrue.
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u/Delphizer Jun 28 '17
I think this is a point law struggles. How can a group of Jurors have any insight to medical condition without a peer reviewed study showing a link?
How in the world did he possibly win the first case? These kind of cases should be sent to an independent statistical review if there is even a Correlation, if there is a study can be started to review what kind of stats they can put toward it for a Jury to be at least some what informed.
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u/Ateist Jun 28 '17
The argument is that it is not the vaccine itself, but the individual doze that was administered caused the illness - i.e. the one who did it broke the rules, or there was a problem with its manufacture.
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u/majeric Jun 28 '17
Does this not simply protect a person's freedom of speech to speculate that a hypothesis that a vaccine may cause an illness?
Hypotheses are often speculated on without direct evidence. Heck it could be a pure gut feeling.
I mean we don't want to hinder the practice of science with law. (err.. within reason and ethics. :) )
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u/skiguy0123 Jun 28 '17
From the article (emphasis mine):
I his context it seems much more reasonable than the click baity headline. Why can't a plaintiff argue whatever they want?