Re: Without Honor in Their Own Country

[EASlavin@aol.com]

Dear Ms. Loeser:

Please be patient and try to understand the difference between tort liability 
on the one hand and workers' compensation on the other, and the history of 
Black Lung compensation and the interim presumption in the first years of 
Black Lung benefits.

AL BROOKS, can you enlighten her why you and I don't want nuclear workers to 
have to prove causation to get a widow's might?  :)

It's because DOE controlled the science, from epi studies to health 
departments to HPs to industrial hygiene.  As Republican Senators Thompson, 
Voinovich and DeWine said, it would be unfair to place the burden of proof on 
nuclear workers at this time to prove the causation, when the science is 
still unclear.  Who has $1 million to spend on medical proof for one workers' 
compensation case, when DOE and its contractors concealed and covered up 
evidence at its plants in the first place?  DOE spent hundreds of thousands 
of dollars fighting a widow's might in workers' compensation cases in Ohio 
and Kentucky where evidence was concealed.  Is that what you want to subject 
workers to as they lie dying?

When Black Lung compensation came into being, causation was not required at 
first -- an interim presumption of entitlement to benefits was established, 
rebuttable, that coal miners who had worked so many years and had Black Lung 
or other lung disease got it from the mines.  It has to do with our humanity 
as a people, and not wanting to impose millions of dollars of causation to 
get compensation and medical benefifts.  Ask Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) why 
it would be wrong to put a burden of proof on the victims.

Ed Slavin

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