policy Archives - The Painful Truth

What Is a Human Life Worth?

President’s Council of Economic Advisers Calculate the Value of a Human Life

President Trump has declared the opioid crisis to be a national health emergency and appears to be developing the rationale for funding interventions to combat the program. The first step is to update the cost of the opioid crisis.

The President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) recently published a report estimating the cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 to be $504 billion.

For that calculation, the CEA estimated the value of a life to be about $10.1 million.

Association Is Not Causation

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s Dubious Decision

CBS News reported on June 21, 2017, “The highest court of the European Union ruled Wednesday that courts can consider whether a vaccination led to someone developing an illness even when there is no scientific proof.”

According to CNN, this ruling means “if the development of a disease is timely to the person’s receiving a vaccine, if 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 certain vaccine, this may serve as enough proof.”