WHO DOES THE CHILDHOOD VACCINE INJURY ACT PROTECT HERE�S A HINT � IT�S NOT THE
KIDS
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
The laws of a country are, generally, designed to protect its citizens. How this ideal is
interpreted is a topic of debate in various circles, but its goal is lofty, if not quite
perfect. Of specific necessity are laws aimed at protecting children, including child abuse,
welfare, and labor laws. Of zero necessity, in my view, is the National Childhood Vaccine
Injury Act(NCVIA), which sounds like it has the best interests of this nation�s young
citizens in mind, but actually serves a much different purpose.
Congress passed the NCVIA in 1986, and President Ronald Reagan signed it into law soon after.
Taken at face value, the law has some admirable provisions: it established improved communication
regarding vaccines across all Department of Health and Human Service agencies; required
health care providers who administer vaccines to provide a vaccine information statement
to the person getting the vaccine or his or her guardian; and established a committee
from the Institute of Medicine to review the literature on vaccine reactions.
Dig a little deeper, however, and the NCVIA does less to protect patients than it does
drug companies making vaccines. When Reagan signed the NCVIA, he also created the National
Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which allows anyone�children and adults�who
have suffered an injury (or worse) following a vaccination to file a claim. To date, it
has paid out nearly $4 billion in compensation since 1988, including the 2008 case of Hannah
Poling, whose family received more than $1.5 million in the first-ever court award for
a vaccine-autism claim.
Lifting liability While this might sound like a good thing,
one must read between the lines. The NCVIA also sets limits on the liability of vaccine
manufacturers. They don�t have to pay a dime, in most cases, if someone is injured
as a result of a product they make. Is there any other industry afforded such immunity?
The pharmaceutical industry makes billions of dollars annually producing, promoting,
and injecting a product that is known to injure people in myriad ways, and bears zero responsibility
when a child�or an adult�suffers as a result.
The system is broken, and it�s why the founders of the nonprofit National Vaccine Information
Center (NVIC), which worked with Congress in the 1980s to get the NCVIA passed, began
calling in 2015 for its repeal. In a press release, NVIC co-founder Barbara Loe Fisher
noted that the federal vaccine injury compensation program has become �a drug company stockholder�s
dream and a parent�s worst nightmare.� In the same document, co-founder Kathi Williams
argues that the provisions that their organization helped secure in the law are not being enforced,
and most children getting government-recommended vaccines are denied vaccine injury compensation.
That zero liability rests on the vaccine manufacturers is a travesty of epic proportions.
I echo their calls for repeal. Children are given between 53 and 56 vaccine doses containing
177 to 232 antigens between birth and age 18. Vaccine reactions range from a mild fever,
muscle/joint pain, and injection site swelling to seizures, trouble breathing, vomiting,
and permanent brain damage. Though considered �rare� by the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, these more serious effects admittedly occur, and people suffer.
That zero liability rests on the vaccine manufacturers is a travesty of epic proportions.
And yet, is anyone truly surprised? This is the same cast of characters that knowingly
inserts neurotoxins such as mercury and aluminum into its products, and uses advertising and
public awareness campaigns to further enrich themselves and ensure that vaccine injury
stories are never shown to the public.
Vaccines and vaccine safety are emotionally charged issues. But setting aside the history
of this controversy and its consequences, the passage of NCVIA raises an overarching
issue that should concern consumers of any product, vaccine or otherwise.
Perhaps not surprisingly, vaccine safety deteriorated when consumers were no longer able to sue
vaccine manufacturers. Safety vs. profit
A 2017 study published in the Review of Industrial Organization looked at whether removing the
right to sue�called �delitigation��affects product safety, and highlighted specifically
the effects of NCVIA on the vaccine industry. Perhaps not surprisingly, vaccine safety deteriorated
when consumers were no longer able to sue vaccine manufacturers.
Author Gayle DeLong, PhD, an economist at Baruch College, attributes this decrease in
safety to the expanded array of vaccines allowed by NCVIA, and argues that some vaccines likely
never would have been developed at all if consumers had retained the right to sue. Losing
the ability to sue companies for bad products results in the production of more bad products,
or maybe not as many good ones, because the companies are inoculated from harm.
The VICP is a no-fault program designed specifically and intentionally to shield vaccine manufacturers,
rather than protect the people harmed by vaccines. This system has lined the pockets of pharmaceutical
companies for decades, while simultaneously giving them the green light to continue making
unsafe vaccines that put people�particularly children�at risk for lifelong, serious health
problems and even death.
Rewarding bad behavior Rather than continue under an arrangement
that essentially rewards bad behavior, NCVIA should be repealed and eventually replaced
with more thoughtful legislation regarding vaccines. Given the sheer number of things
with which we inject millions of children on a daily basis in this country, shouldn�t
someone be held responsible when things go awry? The knee jerk reaction of our government
shouldn�t be to protect the entity that is hurting people. It should be to clearly
and concisely articulate how vaccines can be made safer, and penalize those who don�t
comply.
We all try to take personal responsibility in our lives, whether for our own actions
or for those of our children. We try to teach them right from wrong, to admit when they�ve
done something they shouldn�t have, and show them how to correct it. It�s unfortunate
that the same standards that apply to seven-year-olds don�t apply to pharmaceutical companies.
WRITTEN BY DEIRDRE IMUS IS A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, FOR THE WORLD MERCURY
PROJECT Sign up for free news and updates from Robert
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