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Connie Newcome, president of Kansans for Health Freedom said in testimony to the Kansas State Legislature:

Vaccines are unavoidably unsafe - ruled as such by the US Congress and US Supreme Court. These unavoidably unsafe products, however, are SAFE from indemnity by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Act. How can unavoidably unsafe" be SAFE for babies and children?

Does the term "unavoidably unsafe" come from the US Congress and US Supreme Court and is used to describe vaccines?

Christian
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  • @pinegulf : Because some people like to downvote anything that deals with antivaxx. In the last years an ideology of "you shouldn't platform ideas that challenge authorities" got popular and even if that ideology goes against the skeptic idea of generally being skeptic of everything and investigating what claims are true and which aren't, people who believe in it still come here. – Christian Jun 21 '23 at 11:39
  • Hum. If true, that would make them bad at skepticism. – pinegulf Jun 21 '23 at 12:14
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    @Christian Skeptics like to investigate which claims are true and which aren't. But they realize some people dump a whole bunch of complaints using misleading evidence to give the impression something is wrong, even if each one can be disproven; that is, a Gish Gallop. When proven liars come out with yet another statement, especially with a lie that gets people killed, perhaps skeptics would be better off studying subjects that might be interesting. – prosfilaes Jun 22 '23 at 19:58
  • If your standard is that statements by "proven liars" shouldn't be looked at, then the conclusion would be to look at no statements of politicians as you can find proven lies for nearly any politician. On the other hand, it's important for people to be able to inform themselves which of those claims are true and which aren't. The more real world consequences a statement has the more important is it to fact check it. – Christian Jun 23 '23 at 01:10
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    I think it clear that isn't my standard by my comment. Statements by influential people, including major politicians, are important to fact check, but relentlessly going back to the same subject ("Does _this_ prove the earth is flat?") is pointless and uninteresting. One set of statement with far more real world consequences are of the form "Are {insert sci-fi name} working with {real world group} to {pick one: conquer the world, eat our souls, turn us into cattle, destroy the Earth}?" Obviously, merely having real world consequences isn't enough. – prosfilaes Jun 23 '23 at 14:56
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    @pinegulf This feels like a "push" question: the claim isn't somewhere many people would see it, isn't getting any traction, and is asked about here mostly to publicize it. For example: "is it true that Rikmann's is having a sale next weekend at rock-bottom prices?" – Owen Reynolds Jun 24 '23 at 00:39
  • @OwenReynolds the claim is also made by RFK at Joe Rogan's podcast, so it's widely seen. I quoted this source, because I prefer quoting written documents over quoting podcast for which there are no transcripts. – Christian Jun 28 '23 at 14:25
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    For a Skeptics Q you should also explain how a claim has been widely seen. "On the JR web series RFK said that at a meeting of ... ". That helps establish that a claim is worth refuting, also the more widely heard version often misquotes the original so it's good to see both. – Owen Reynolds Jun 28 '23 at 21:19
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    Mostly it's dumping many claims from a single source in a short amount of time - I'm sure you could write hundreds of good questions about RFK nonsense. If you asked one a week it's fine but they take wildly more time to answer than ask, so you're asking for a lot from people to answer many questions in a short amount of time – CJR Jul 06 '23 at 17:45

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This question arises from a total misreading of legal terminology. From NOLO:

A product that is unavoidably unsafe cannot by its nature be made safe and still fulfill its intended purpose. In other words, if the product were to be made safe it would no longer be capable of being useful for its original purpose. For example, a kitchen knife may be used to cut foodstuffs. It is a sharp object that is capable of causing injury. If it were to be made safe, and the blade made so blunt that it could not cause injury to anyone under any circumstances, it would no longer be able to fulfill the role for which it was intended.

The phrase "unavoidably unsafe" has indeed been applied to vaccines, for example the live polio vaccine. But it should not be necessary to cite case law to prove this, because if you read the description above with a knowledge of how vaccines work, this is obviously a literal description of many vaccines, especially live vaccines.

The question is, if you are injured by a vaccine or another medical treatment, whether this constitutes a tort which entitles you to legal compensation. In the case of an "unavoidably unsafe" treatment, the answer is that the risk of the treatment could not have been avoided by the medical practitioner so you must work harder to demonstrate a tort.

This concept has value for lawyers, but it doesn't make sense to deploy the term "unavoidably unsafe" in deciding whether to accept medical treatment. Would you refuse surgery because scalpels are unavoidably unsafe? This is far from the most important thing to take into account when evaluating the risks of surgery.

Another unavoidably unsafe product is blood:

Victims of transfusion-related diseases, however, generally have been unsuccessful when making claims against the purveyors of blood products because of blood shield statutes that were initially enacted in response to unknown pathogens that made the blood an "unavoidably unsafe" product.

If you were dying from blood loss, would you refuse a transfusion because the "unavoidably unsafe" status of blood makes you unable to sue the hospital if you accidentally contracted AIDS? Most patients would not really place urgency on this legal issue.

The answer to the question is yes, but it is not evidence against vaccines.

Avery
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  • If you are near dying you usually are willing to take treatments, whether surgery or blood donations that come with the possibility of significant side effects because the benefits outweigh the risks. Generally, the nearer a person is to dying the more willing we are to give them drugs with strong side effects which is why we give cancer patients surgery despite strong side effects. "Vaccines come with significant risk of side effects but the benefits outweigh that" is a different position from "Vaccines have no significant side effects and are completely safe" the later position is common. – Christian Jun 21 '23 at 11:11
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    @Christian I don't think I mentioned anything about "significant risk" in my answer -- I am talking only about "unavoidable risk" – Avery Jun 21 '23 at 12:37
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    Your link about the polio vaccine is from 1975, so presumably refers to the old live-virus oral polio vaccine (OPV)? If so, that's important because OPV is [almost completely replaced by the safer and more effective injected IPV](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2202331-every-country-worldwide-is-now-using-the-most-effective-polio-vaccine/). I don't think any medical professional would dispute that OPV is somewhat "unavoidably unsafe" (but still vastly preferable to unvaccinated polio exposure): if only it (or only live-virus vaccines) are legally described that way, it changes the answer? – user56reinstatemonica8 Jul 05 '23 at 12:57
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    I doesn't take a "significant risk" for something to be unavoidably unsafe. 1 in 1 million people die/injured from a vaccine it's unavoidably unsafe in the legal sense. You're still more likely to be hit by lightning. – aslum Jul 10 '23 at 15:29