title: Why change? A look at the current system of disability determination and workers' compensation for occupational lung disease.
abstract: Under the current system of disability determination and workers' compensation for occupational lung disease, disabled workers or their survivors can reasonably count on being compensated. However, by rejecting established scientific truth in order to pay workers' compensation in circumstances where disability or death had not been due to occupation, the system has operated unfairly and has undermined public confidence and respect. To gain more scientific integrity and fairness, the system should be changed to provide for adjudication by scientifically informed disability boards. The adversary system sould be retained, however, as needed protection against bias, quackery, and mendacity.
mesh_terms: D003032:Coal Mining / Q000191:economics; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D006801:Humans; D008171:Lung Diseases / Q000191:economics*; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000191:economics*; D011009:Pneumoconiosis / Q000191:economics; D014481:United States; D014942:Workers' Compensation / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence