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Previous Volume 358:1883-1885 May 1, 2008 Number 18 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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Everyone would like to be immune from lawsuits. Legislatures sometimes provide immunity in order to advance important social policy goals. For example, by providing health care professionals with immunity under Good Samaritan statutes, legislatures hope to encourage voluntary medical assistance in emergencies. Similarly, Congress provided immunity to vaccine manufacturers who claimed they could not economically manufacture vaccines with the threat of liability hanging over them.

Because providing immunity deprives injured people of their day in court, legislation that creates immunity sometimes also creates an alternative compensatory mechanism. For example, the federal law that immunized vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits created a . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

Mr. Glantz and Mr. Annas are professors in the Department of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights at Boston University School of Public Health, Boston.

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Annas, G. J. (2009). Good Law from Tragic Facts -- Congress, the FDA, and Preemption. NEJM 361: 1206-1211 [Full Text]