Jun 23, 2017 07:34 PM
http://www.acsh.org/news/2017/06/21/new-...ines-11468
EXCERPT: It reads like a headline from The Onion. Alas, it is real: “EU court: Vaccines can be blamed for illness without scientific evidence,” writes CNN. The EU court’s ruling was based on the case of a Frenchman who accused a hepatitis B vaccine manufacturer for causing his multiple sclerosis. (Vaccines do not cause multiple sclerosis.) The court’s decision is Kafkaesque:
“The EU's highest court said that if the development of a disease is timely to the person's receiving a vaccine, if the person was previously health [sic] with a lack of history of the disease in their family and if a significant number of disease cases are reported among people receiving a certain vaccine, this may serve as enough proof.”
Apparently, rigorous epidemiological evidence is no longer necessary to prove anything in a European courtroom. If a plaintiff can demonstrate that he received a vaccine before he contracted an illness, the EU considers that to be potentially sufficient evidence to prove causation.
In other words, if A precedes B, then the EU believes that we can safely conclude that A caused B. Post hoc ergo propter hoc – a logical fallacy taught to scientists and lawyers – apparently is now the law of the land in Europe....
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EXCERPT: It reads like a headline from The Onion. Alas, it is real: “EU court: Vaccines can be blamed for illness without scientific evidence,” writes CNN. The EU court’s ruling was based on the case of a Frenchman who accused a hepatitis B vaccine manufacturer for causing his multiple sclerosis. (Vaccines do not cause multiple sclerosis.) The court’s decision is Kafkaesque:
“The EU's highest court said that if the development of a disease is timely to the person's receiving a vaccine, if the person was previously health [sic] with a lack of history of the disease in their family and if a significant number of disease cases are reported among people receiving a certain vaccine, this may serve as enough proof.”
Apparently, rigorous epidemiological evidence is no longer necessary to prove anything in a European courtroom. If a plaintiff can demonstrate that he received a vaccine before he contracted an illness, the EU considers that to be potentially sufficient evidence to prove causation.
In other words, if A precedes B, then the EU believes that we can safely conclude that A caused B. Post hoc ergo propter hoc – a logical fallacy taught to scientists and lawyers – apparently is now the law of the land in Europe....
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