In this case, the Tribunal adopted an approach which, if correct, might,
without more, obviate the necessity of significant legisative or administrative change. Its
approach was simple. Once eligibility by war service and relationship to the deceased
were established and death proved to result from a disease of unknown aetiology, the
requisite proof beyond reasonable doubt excluding a link between the fatal disease and
wer service was virtually impossible. If the aetiology of the disease is unknown, that
would, in normal compensation litigation, prevent the proof of entitlement, the obligation
to establish which normally falls upon the claimant for a benefit. But this is not normal
eompensation litigation. The Parliament has not only reversed the onus of proof. It has
also expressed the onus in terms of the high standard of satisfaction beyond reasonable
doubt. In default of such a satisfaction, the Tribunal's obligation under paragraph
107VH(2Xa) 1s to set aside the decision and to substitute for that decision a decision in
accordance with the Aet. Obviously, if the approach adopted by the Tribunal in the
present case is the correct one, the implications for repatriation cases of diseases of
unknown aetiology, such as cancer, will be significant. Because the Repatriation
Commission could rarely, if ever, exclude beyond reasonable doubt the possibility of
causal relationships, precisely because of the lack of present medical knowlege as to the
causative factors of cancer, the statutory process required by the Act would, in most
eases, certainly on short evidence such as was available in the present matter, result with
virtual inevitability in a failure to discharge the onus. From this conclusion the award of
the pension would necessarily follow. The essential question for determination is,