From the foregoing, it is clear that the purpose of Statements of Principles is to provide, exclusively, the medical-scientific element within a suggested chain of causation in a claim for pension for an injury, disease or death. If the claimed injury, disease or death is of a kind that is the subject of a Statement of Principles, then, where subsection 120(3) applies, a hypothesis will be reasonable for the purposes of that subsection only if the Statement of Principles upholds that hypothesis.

Similarly, where subsection 120(4) applies instead, the Commission can be reasonably satisfied that the injury, disease or death was war-caused or defence-caused only if the Statement of Principles relating to that kind of injury, disease or death upholds the contention that the injury, disease or death is, on the balance of probabilities, connected with the person's service.

It is important to note that Statements of Principles made under subsection 196B(2) do not, of themselves, define a "reasonable hypothesis". A "reasonable hypothesis" can only ever arise in the context of a claim for pension and must relate to the connection between the particular circumstances of the particular person's service and his or her injury, disease or death.

Thus, neither the Repatriation Medical Authority nor the Council is concerned with determining whether or not, as a general proposition, it is a "reasonable hypothesis" that a particular factor can cause a particular kind of injury, disease or death. However, one or more factors contained within a Statement of Principles must provide support for the medical-scientific link that forms part of a "reasonable hypothesis" when the Statement of Principles is relied upon to uphold a suggested chain of causation linking the particular circumstances of a veteran's service to his or her injury, disease or death. Therefore, the factors that are to be contained in a subsection 196B(2) Statement of Principles must be such that it can be said, in relation to every person for whom a factor is relevant and who has suffered or contracted, or who has died from, the relevant kind of injury or disease, that a "reasonable hypothesis" has been raised connecting that person's injury, disease or death with the circumstances of his or her service.

The inclusion of a particular factor in a Statement of Principles determined under subsection 196B(2) means that the Repatriation Medical Authority is satisfied that there is sound medical-scientific evidence that indicates that it can be said, in the case of every person to whom the Statement of Principles is intended to apply, that it would be a "reasonable hypothesis" that exposure of the person to that factor made a contribution to that person's injury, disease or death.

Similarly, for a Statement of Principles determined under subsection 196B(3), the inclusion of a particular factor in that Statement of Principles means that, on the sound medical-scientific evidence available, the Repatriation Medical Authority is satisfied that it can be said in the case of every person to whom that Statement of Principles is intended to apply, that it is more likely than not that exposure of the person to that factor made a contribution to that person's injury, disease or death.