{"id":267,"date":"2008-03-31T09:48:20","date_gmt":"2008-03-31T14:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theness.com\/neurologicablog\/?p=267"},"modified":"2008-03-31T16:27:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-31T20:27:00","slug":"preponderance-of-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theness.com\/neurologicablog\/preponderance-of-evidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Preponderance of Evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote previously<\/a> about the case of Hanna Poling – whose case was before the vaccine court and was settled by the US government who decided that “compensation was appropriate.” Today in the New York Times Paul Offit, a vaccine and infectious disease expert, wrote a great editorial <\/a>about the case and its potential for harm to public health.<\/p>\n

He made one interesting point, of which I was not aware, and so want to point it out as an addition to my previous post. Offit points out that up until a few years ago the Vaccine Compensation Court, who administers a special fund set up to compensate those legitimately injured by vaccine, used the legal standard of preponderance of the evidence in order to decide compensation cases.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, now they have lowered the standard. Petitioners no longer need to present evidence that a particular vaccine causes the type of injury alleged, they just have to present a biologically plausible mechanism for possible injury. Even if the evidence suggests the proposed mechanism is wrong, if it is plausible then the court will err on the side of compensation.<\/p>\n

Offit argues, I think correctly, that the standard should be returned to preponderance of the evidence. Give his editorial a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote previously about the case of Hanna Poling – whose case was before the vaccine court and was settled by the US government who decided that “compensation was appropriate.” Today in the New York Times Paul Offit, a vaccine and infectious disease expert, wrote a great editorial about the case and its potential for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[654],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alternative-medicine","tag-agency"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t