The FDA has decided that silicone breast implants are safe after all. Will lawyers now have to give back the money awarded in lawsuits against the silicone implant manufacturers and medical doctors? Of course not. And John Edwards won't have to repay the awards he received based on junk science. Nor will he have to pay for the money wasted on unnecessary ceasarian sections performed by doctors protecting themselves from unjustified lawsuits. It seems to me that we have a serious problem with juries deciding scientific issues. It is bad enough that juries are asked to decide issues about which they have no knowledge, and which they are incapable of understanding, but the reality is that the lawyers strive to select the dumbest, most emotional people they can for the jury. Maybe a "jury of peers" should have to be selected from a panel of people who can understand the issues rather than the uneducated masses.

Another problem is that litigation is more a contest between lawyers than a search for justice. Consider the OJ case now in the news again. We don't seem to be much better than in the days when guilt or innocence was determined by a contest between "champions" as in the novel Ivanhoe.