Vaccine Court
This article on the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is very interesting reading. There is a lot of stuff in it that I didn’t know about previously.
The underling issues are some of the most interesting to me. I don’t think that anyone would argue that the people who make the polio vaccines and similar products provide a valuable service that saves huge numbers of lives. The unfortunate fact though is that for a small number of people these life saving medications themselves cause horrible problems.
It is fairly obvious to me that in such a situation it is wrong to make the vaccine makers liable for these results. The current system, despite it’s apparent flaws, which the article points out, seems to me to be in theory a decent compromise. If it wasn’t for the fact that a vaccine is a pubic good, as well as a private good I might think differently, but the public as a whole benefits greatly from limiting the spread of contagious diseases and preventing epidemics. So a court, backed by a government controled fund, designed to ease the fears of people taking the vaccine that any possible negative effects will at least in part be mitigated is probably a worthwhile public goal.
The problem seems to be, as with many worthwhile public goals, the difficulty in implimenting such a system. Too lax a system and a lot of fraud slips in, possibly undermining the system itself. Too stringent a system causes many deserving people to go without compensation, also undermining faith in the system. Striking a perfect balance is probably impossible, and even a perfect balance would allow some of each problem to occur, with both extemes probably recieving more publicity than they deserve.
I am not sure that there is an answer to this but it is something worth thinking about.
