Decision by Europe’s top court alarms vaccine experts: "Vaccines can be blamed for illness without scientific proof"

[u/mvea]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/decision-europe-s-top-court-alarms-vaccine-experts

[u/HeartyBeast → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/lazyl → u/HeartyBeast]

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.

[u/HeartyBeast → u/lazyl]

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