OPINION
The Doctor
Many people think I wasted my time studying philosophy. That may be true, but I did pick up some gems along the way.
One of them was burden of proof tennis. Do I have the responsibility to prove my point to my interlocutor or does he have to prove his opposing perspective?
This idea is related to the “absence of evidence” fallacy. The absence of evidence does not necessarily imply that there is evidence of absence.
Consider baby Will’s case. According to the blood service and Te Whatu Ora, there is no evidence that supplied blood (potentially containing the blood of mRNA jabbed individuals) can be harmful to recipients.
But does this absence of evidence imply that the blood is not harmful? Not necessarily. There are two possibilities: the blood is harmful, and we don’t know, or the blood is not harmful, and we don’t know.
The only thing we can conclude is that we don’t know.
Who, then, has the burden of proof? Does the blood service or Te Whatu Ora have to prove that it is not harmful? Or do baby Will’s parents have to prove that it is harmful? It looks like we have a Wimbledon final game of burden of proof tennis.
According to the maxim at law onis probandi, when bringing a case, the burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. Then it follows that Te Whatu Ora must prove that the blood is safe, does it not?
Not so fast. We are assuming that the subject matter is the blood and whether it is safe and whether Will’s parents can request unvaccinated blood for their baby. But I think that is a sideshow. It is a distraction.
This is really a property rights case. Who “owns” baby Will? And whoever owns baby Will can do whatever they like. According to the doctrine parens patriae, the corporation trading as “The Government of New Zealand” is the “owner” of Will since his parents inadvertently transferred Will to be a “ward” of the state in the “delivery” room. And then confirmed that when they “registered” his “birth” (look up these words in an old edition of Black’s Law Dictionary).
At the time of writing, we have not heard Justice Gault’s decision. But if it is anything but awarding guardianship to Te Whatu Ora for the purposes of the operation then the parents must have shown a superior title to Will (e.g. by rescinding his birth registration for misrepresentation). Don’t be fooled by the flourish and smoke. This case is not about blood or vaccination.
All this talk of the law brings to mind another thing I learned in the philosophy department: philosophers are the worst kind of lawyers because they do not even know they are lawyers. Maybe I should have spent my time in the law school.