On the safety question I have just written a post on aluminum adjuvants here. I was unable to confirm safety, but we’ll see what others say.
Should we actually do this policy change, or operate with the existing system? Generally, I think the social deadweight losses associated with these types of lawsuits are enormous.
Pharma companies would bear the losses for harms, but not be rewarded for the health gains of vaccines. Seems infeasible to maintain current incentives for innovation. Unless we are saying they will charge lots for the vaccines—but we are also having a discourse about paying them too much money!
Add to this, court systems are very, very bad at dealing with probabilistic harms. Judges and juries lack statistical literacy. The main beneficiary of this system would be the lawyers.
This policy is only sensible to consider in combination with other policy to drastically reduce the role of the FDA as the blocker of market access (on the theory that with insurance bearing the load it would be less needed, and we can now afford a faster and less formalized process)
On the safety question I have just written a post on aluminum adjuvants here. I was unable to confirm safety, but we’ll see what others say.
Should we actually do this policy change, or operate with the existing system?
Generally, I think the social deadweight losses associated with these types of lawsuits are enormous.
Pharma companies would bear the losses for harms, but not be rewarded for the health gains of vaccines. Seems infeasible to maintain current incentives for innovation. Unless we are saying they will charge lots for the vaccines—but we are also having a discourse about paying them too much money!
Add to this, court systems are very, very bad at dealing with probabilistic harms. Judges and juries lack statistical literacy. The main beneficiary of this system would be the lawyers.
This policy is only sensible to consider in combination with other policy to drastically reduce the role of the FDA as the blocker of market access (on the theory that with insurance bearing the load it would be less needed, and we can now afford a faster and less formalized process)