Can your friend explain why vaccines are different from other drugs? Everything has side effects. Precisely because the Democrats have such a stake in pushing the interests of trial lawyers the Republicans have the opposite incentive making just about any pronouncements on this topic highly suspect - - particularly when they include one-sided political flames. - - Bill Dickens (DC)
William T. Dickens The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 797-6113 FAX: (202) 797-6181 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AOL IM: wtdickens >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/22/02 07:27AM >>> David: As you seem interested in this issue, here's a reply I got to my vaccine question from my knowledgeable friend, Ron, who is not on this network. Your, Asa ************************ The proposal, as I understand it, is not to cap liability for actual damages, that is medical bills, lost future earning cased by death of a working person, burial costs, child care and similar real damages. Real damages are affordable and can be insured against. Rather, the proposal would protect drug companies from punitive damages, which make up most of the awards in recent absurd tort cases and settlements to avert punitive damages, and vicarious liability, the convoluted search for deep pockets seen in many of these abusive tort awards. Vicarious liability generally involves some obscure claim for agency of the party with deep pockets. Since in the case of vaccines, the only deep pocket would be the drug company producing them, no reasonable Board of Directors would allow a major drug company to produce the vaccines without tort protection. There have been several occasions recently when vaccines were needed by the Armed Forces and the natural producers not being able to obtain tort relief by statute and not being able to insure the risk, essentially put the product in the public domain and the DOD funded a "no pocket" production corporation to make it. The tort situation for corporations is so bad that most Boards would not do this again because of the potential for vicarious liability for the intellectual property or the bugs or the proto-vaccine. The enormous contributions of the Plaintiffs lawyers to the Democratic Party and to four of five key Republican Senators, McCain and Jeffords, before he switched parties, particularly, are intended to prevent tort limits, like those proposed for vaccines. Absent a ban on punitive damages and vicarious liability, big tort awards are a sure thing with any vaccine. And not just from the actual medical problems that are sure to arise. Count on a vaccine syndrome and a jury somewhere in the Mississippi Delta -- LA, MISS or ARK. ********************** -- The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. -- Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party