Friday 23 May 2008



The Coming Clash.

Will the law of unintended consequences rear it’s head in the coming age of marvel cure medical technologies?

Recall the heartening breakthrough treatment for server spinal injury in the blog post below?

Well, it suddenly occurred to me (not in this kind of detail of below course):

‘What if soon one day people with once horrific spinal injuries start to breath, move, walk, and even run normally down to the local once again. But had been comprehensively and quite heavily covered by life and accident insurance before the disaster?’

Then I thought:

‘What if they had been given a truly substantial payout. Say £3 million plus, for instance.’

Then I thought:

‘What if they’d bought a substantial and specially designed property to live in. With 100s of 1000s of pounds of living space adaptations and special needs equipment (a swimming pool, a physiotherapy gym, a special layout kitchen, a specially adapted car, and so on)?


The question remains - and I’m no lawyer - what will be legal position be for both assuror and claimant?

Of course the big assurance houses will be in litigation terra incognito. They’ve paid out £billions world wide in insurance claims to severely debilitated paraplegic people (and rightly so).

But, will the claimant have to pay back all or a major share of the monies?

And with the myriad of revolutionary medical breakthroughs going on; it makes one wonder what other conclict of interest awaits over the legal-technological horizon?

Q.E.D: The Coming Clash!

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