EU Court Issues Over-Reaching Ruling on Vaccines

In June 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that courts may consider vaccines to be the cause of an illness, even if there is no scientific evidence confirming a link. The Court said that if the development of a disease is timely to the person’s receiving a vaccine, it may serve as enough proof – provided that the person was previously healthy 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 particular vaccine. The ruling stemmed from the case of a French man known as J.W., who was vaccinated against hepatitis B in 1998 and developed multiple sclerosis a year later. Multiple sclerosis is known to scar nerve tissue and cause a range of symptoms, from vision problems to paralysis. In 2006, J.W. sued pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur, which produced the vaccine, blaming it for his decline in health. J.W. died in 2011. The case was brought before the Court of Appeal in France, which ruled that there was no scientific consensus supporting a causal link and no evidence of a causal link between the hepatitis B vaccine and the man's multiple sclerosis, therefore dismissing the action. This judgment was appealed and brought to the French Court of Cessation, which took it to the European Court of Justice. The Court of Justice said that "specific and consistent evidence" relating to timeliness, a prior healthy status, lack of family history and multiple cases may prove t...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs