A further problem with a liability model for vaccines is that they must be relatively cheap to be useful. They usually have large measurable public benefits, but highly variable and invisible private benefits. So any given person doesn’t know whether or how much they benefited from a vaccination, but can easily attribute problems to it (correctly or not).
Under a product liability model the producer is getting only a small fraction of the positive value of vaccination to society, but is being stuck with costs plus penalties for most of the problems and legal risk of being incorrectly blamed for some other issues. The obvious response would be to build in a premium to the price of every vaccine, capturing more of the positive value to account for the risk. The higher price would reduce the prevalence of vaccination and greatly reduce the benefits to everyone.
So while product liability seems to be a ‘fair’ approach superficially, it’s not really a suitable model even given very safe vaccines, and would make people substantially worse off on net.
So any given person doesn’t know whether or how much they benefited from a vaccination, but can easily attribute problems to it (correctly or not).
I don’t think that negative side effect attribution is easy.
The more than doubling in infant deaths of DPT-vaccinated girls in Guinea-Bissau was not easily picked up.
If the side effect of a childhood vaccine would be a 5-point drop in IQ, it’s very unlikely that this would be picked up by current processes but it would still be a very clinically significant effect.
In general, most people who have head-trauma-induced depression don’t know about the causation as it takes months to develop afterward.
If the mercury that gets into the brain as a result of a thimerosal-based vaccine would produce inflammation that has effects similar to head-trauma in some patients it would likely be very hard to pick up given that it’s not an effect you would see directly after the vaccine is given.
The higher price would reduce the prevalence of vaccination and greatly reduce the benefits to everyone.
For most patients who decide whether or not to vaccinate, the price is zero because someone else pays for the vaccine. The price is paid by the government or health insurance companies.
Giving manufacturers liability would however make the vaccines more trustworthy for those people who are on the edge and thus likely increase vaccination rates.
A further problem with a liability model for vaccines is that they must be relatively cheap to be useful. They usually have large measurable public benefits, but highly variable and invisible private benefits. So any given person doesn’t know whether or how much they benefited from a vaccination, but can easily attribute problems to it (correctly or not).
Under a product liability model the producer is getting only a small fraction of the positive value of vaccination to society, but is being stuck with costs plus penalties for most of the problems and legal risk of being incorrectly blamed for some other issues. The obvious response would be to build in a premium to the price of every vaccine, capturing more of the positive value to account for the risk. The higher price would reduce the prevalence of vaccination and greatly reduce the benefits to everyone.
So while product liability seems to be a ‘fair’ approach superficially, it’s not really a suitable model even given very safe vaccines, and would make people substantially worse off on net.
So any given person doesn’t know whether or how much they benefited from a vaccination, but can easily attribute problems to it (correctly or not).
I don’t think that negative side effect attribution is easy.
The more than doubling in infant deaths of DPT-vaccinated girls in Guinea-Bissau was not easily picked up.
If the side effect of a childhood vaccine would be a 5-point drop in IQ, it’s very unlikely that this would be picked up by current processes but it would still be a very clinically significant effect.
In general, most people who have head-trauma-induced depression don’t know about the causation as it takes months to develop afterward.
If the mercury that gets into the brain as a result of a thimerosal-based vaccine would produce inflammation that has effects similar to head-trauma in some patients it would likely be very hard to pick up given that it’s not an effect you would see directly after the vaccine is given.
For most patients who decide whether or not to vaccinate, the price is zero because someone else pays for the vaccine. The price is paid by the government or health insurance companies.
Giving manufacturers liability would however make the vaccines more trustworthy for those people who are on the edge and thus likely increase vaccination rates.