By Barbara Loe Fisher
Three decades ago, Congress created a federal vaccine injury
compensation program (VICP) and gave the pharmaceutical and
medical trade industries a partial product liability shield
under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
The goal was simple: to restrict civil lawsuits against
vaccine manufacturers and negligent doctors whenever government
mandated vaccines injure and kill Americans.1
In the 21st century, Congress went further and directed
federal agencies to develop a public-private business
partnership with the pharmaceutical industry.2,3
Today, multi-national corporations marketing vaccines enjoy a
$15 billion dollar U.S. and $30 billion dollar global vaccine
market that will reach $100 billion in 10 years.4,5
At the same time, Congress appropriates billions of U.S.
taxpayer dollars to federal agencies working with Big Pharma to
develop hundreds of new vaccines,6,7
while vaccine licensing standards have been lowered so companies
can fast track experimental vaccines to market.8,9
Meaningful congressional oversight on vaccine regulation and
policymaking is non-existent today, in part because the
pharmaceutical industry is the number one wealthiest and most
powerful lobby on Capitol Hill.10,11,12,13
Obtaining Vaccine Injury Compensation: Do You Feel Lucky?
Parents, who file a claim today on behalf of a brain damaged
vaccine injured child in the federal vaccine injury compensation
program (VICP) under the 1986 Act, know that the odds of
obtaining financial assistance from the government are not much
better than the odds of winning a lottery.14
Department of Health and Justice officials fight almost every
award in the U.S. Court of Claims so two out of three vaccine
injury claims are denied.15
Parents already traumatized because their healthy child was
permanently disabled or died after receiving a
government-licensed pharmaceutical product they were promised
would keep their child well, are traumatized again, in what has
become a highly adversarial and lengthy process that too often
ends in disbelief, anger, and heartbreak.
Government Officials Gut 1986 NCVIA and Betray Public Trust
Congress created the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act
(NCVIA) in 1986 as a social contract between government and
parents, who are required under state vaccine laws to give their
children federally recommended vaccines in order to attend
school.
Since 1995, the vaccine injury compensation program set up
under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has been
systematically gutted by government officials, who vigorously
opposed passage of the law in 198616
and have been determined to destroy it ever since.
After, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 effectively completely
shielded the pharmaceutical industry from all civil liability
for injuries and deaths caused by FDA licensed vaccines.17
There has been no legal accountability for any corporation or
individual who develops, licenses, recommends, promotes,
administers, or mandates vaccines that injure and kill
Americans.
The history of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act is
one that has been marked by a profound betrayal of the public
trust by government.
At the center of that betrayal are doctors and scientists
working for government and with industry, who are so determined
to deny vaccine risks and cover up the casualties of
one-size-fits-all vaccine policies, that they will throw
innocent children under the bus to do it.
Toxic DPT Vaccine Brain Injures Children
I remember walking the halls of Congress in 1982 with other
young parents of DPT vaccine-injured children asking for a
congressional investigation into the safety of the old whole
cell pertussis vaccine.
We did not understand why federal health agencies had not
required drug companies to make that crude vaccine less toxic.
We wanted to know why our babies did not have access to the less
reactive new split cell pertussis vaccine in the DTaP shot that
Japan was giving their children using technology developed in
the 1970s.18
We knew that the 1981 British National Childhood
Encephalopathy Study revealed that 1 in 110,000 DPT shots was
followed by brain inflammation and 1 in 310,000 DPT shots by
permanent brain damage.19
We knew another prospective, case controlled study published
in the U.S. the same year revealed convulsions occurred after 1
in 875 DPT shots, and a collapse shock reaction occurred after 1
in 875 DPT shots, meaning that at least 18,000 children in
America were either having convulsions or collapsing after DPT
shots.20,21
But, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials did not know
who those children were, because pediatricians were not required
to report vaccine reactions, inform parents about how to monitor
children for signs and symptoms of vaccine reactions, keep
permanent records of vaccines given, or write down serious
health problems following vaccination in medical records.
Big Pharma Demands Liability Protection from Vaccine Injury
Lawsuits
Back in the 1970s and '80s, parents were filing product
liability lawsuits against the three drug companies selling DPT
vaccine, and also against one selling live oral polio vaccine
after children were paralyzed by vaccine strain polio.
Parents were also filing malpractice lawsuits against
pediatricians when their babies were re-vaccinated after
reacting to previous DPT shots with convulsions, shock, high
pitched screaming, and unconsciousness, which can be signs of
brain inflammation or encephalopathy,22
a well known complication of vaccination since the first
vaccines for smallpox and rabies were used in the 19th century.23
Thirty years ago, high-powered attorneys for pharmaceutical
corporations and pediatricians were blackmailing parents on the
courthouse steps before jury trials began to settle vaccine
injury lawsuits without going to trial.
Few parents had the financial resources to battle big drug
companies in court for long periods of time, and so many would
settle for low sums of money just before the trial began.
As part of the settlement, parents had to agree that all
court documents about their child's vaccine injury would be
sealed and blocked from public view. I was among the parents of
DPT vaccine injured children, who organized after watching the
Emmy award winning TV documentary "DPT: Vaccine Roulette" in the
spring of 1982.
We accepted the invitation by congressional leaders taking
action after the four drug companies marketing childhood
vaccines in the U.S. (Wyeth, Lederle, Merck, and Connaught) told
Congress they would stop distributing the federally recommended
and state mandated DPT, polio, and MMR vaccines if Congress
refused to give them a liability shield from vaccine injury
lawsuits.24
Vaccine Injury Compensation: 'Simple Justice for Children?'
In an era when people communicated with each other on land
lines and through the mail because there was no internet, email,
personal computers, or cell phones, parents of vaccine injured
children fought as hard as we could to protect the legal right
to sue pharmaceutical corporations for vaccine injuries and
deaths under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which
was the solution Congress came up with in response to threats by
the pharmaceutical industry.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) called the federal
vaccine injury compensation program "simple justice for
children." Politicians said it would be a safety net for every
child when vaccine risks turn out to be 100 percent.25
We were promised that the program would be a non-adversarial,
expedited, less traumatic, and less expensive administrative
alternative to a lawsuit – not an exclusive legal
remedy that prohibited all product liability lawsuits
against vaccine manufacturers.
We believed that Congress would keep the promises made to
parents when it gave partial liability protection to the
pharmaceutical industry producing vaccines and the medical trade
industry representing pediatricians. We believed that the
informing, reporting, and recording of vaccine safety
provisions, which the co-founders of the National Vaccine
Information Center (NVIC) were specifically responsible for
securing into that law, would be enforced.26
Parents Trusted Congress Would Enforce 1986 Vaccine Injury Act
We trusted that Congress would make sure drug companies and
federal health agencies would conduct biological mechanism
research to identify high risk children and improve vaccine
safety, and that all pediatricians and vaccine providers would
be required to obey vaccine safety provisions to:
- Give parents written information about infectious
diseases, vaccines, and how to identify vaccine reactions
before their children were vaccinated
- Enter reactions and serious health problems developing
after vaccination into the child's permanent medical record
- Keep a record of all vaccines given, including the
manufacturer's name and lot number
- File a report with the federal vaccine adverse event
reporting system (VAERS) when a child suffered vaccine
reaction symptoms and serious health problems, was
hospitalized, or died after vaccination.
Government Has Broken VICP Social Contract with Parents
Every one of the promises made to parents 30 years ago in
that social contract have been broken, and "simple justice for
children" has turned out to be a lie. Over the past three
decades, government agencies and their pharmaceutical and
medical trade industry partners have turned the National
Childhood Vaccine Injury Act into a drug company stockholder's
dream and a parent's worst nightmare.
Government Targets Pertussis Vaccine Injured Children
Now, in a desperate attempt to convince the public that
vaccines are the only class of pharmaceutical product in the
history of pharmacology completely free of serious side effects,27,28
the genetically defective label is being slapped on children who
suffer brain inflammation and permanent brain damage after
vaccination.29
Even though scientists have known for more than a century
that vaccines can cause seizures,30
brain inflammation (encephalitis/encephalomyelitis)31,32,33
and permanent brain damage, also called encephalopathy,34,35
doctors working for government and with industry want to pretend
that vaccines containing lab altered bacteria and live viruses,
toxins, chemicals, foreign DNA, and other contaminants36
do not brain damage anyone, especially healthy infants.
Children who become brain damaged after receiving
pertussis-containing vaccines (like DPT and DTaP) are especially
being targeted in a blatant effort to rewrite history and cover
up vaccine risks and failures.37,38
Perhaps that is because, among the $3 billion dollars in federal
vaccine injury compensation awarded over the past 27 years under
the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, the majority
of awards for children have been for pertussis-containing
vaccine injuries and deaths.39
The reason for that is because there is a substantial amount
of biological mechanisms and epidemiological evidence in the
medical literature that pertussis vaccine is, indeed, causally
related to encephalitis and chronic neurological dysfunction in
both animals40,41,42
and humans
43,44,45,46,47,48
In fact, pertussis toxin, a component of pertussis vaccine, as
well as pertussis vaccine itself, have been used by lab
researchers for decades to reliably stimulate experimental
autoimmune encephalomyelitis in mice and rats.49,50,51
How Can 'Unavoidably Unsafe' Vaccines Be 100 Percent Safe?
Even though Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have declared
that FDA licensed vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe" for the
purpose of banning product liability lawsuits against drug
companies,52,53,54
government officials still want you to believe that vaccines are
100 percent safe for you, your children, and everyone you know,
100 percent of the time.
The "it's your fault, not the fault of our vaccines" defense
is the ultimate free pass the pharmaceutical and medical trade
industries are determined to get so they can keep on telling
lies, such as the claim that it would be safe to give babies
10,000 vaccines at once,55
to justify forcing one-size-fits-all vaccine policies on all
children and adults – no exceptions and no questions asked.56
The utilitarian "greater good" argument only works if nobody is
held accountable for the individuals being sacrificed in the
name of the greater good.
Health Officials Blame Spontaneous Genetic Mutations for Vaccine
Injuries
The newest ploy is to allege that if a child's health
suddenly deteriorates after vaccination, especially after
pertussis vaccination, it is caused by unavoidable de novo
– that's a Latin word for "new" — genetic mutations the child
probably did not inherit but spontaneously
developed at some point in his or her life.57,58
That's right. Government officials and the hired guns they
pay with your taxpayer dollars want you to believe that if your
child was developing normally before getting three or six or 10
government mandated vaccines on the same day (especially
pertussis containing vaccines) and then has a seizure and
develops encephalopathy within hours or days of getting those
vaccines, your child was predestined to become brain injured at
that moment in time, even if no vaccines had been given.59,60
The government's "it's your fault" causation theory goes like
this: since public health officials believe it was your child's
destiny to develop random new mutations that cause chronic brain
dysfunction, no vaccine injury compensation is to be awarded
because the vaccines didn't do it.
The vaccine manufacturer selling the vaccines didn't do it; the
federal health officials who licensed and recommended the
vaccines didn't do it; the state health officials and
legislators who voted to mandate the vaccines didn't do it; the
doctor giving the vaccines didn't do it – you and your child's
spontaneously defective genes did it. So you and your child are
on your own.
Pertussis Vaccine Injured Children Denied VICP Awards
And this is already happening. Normally developing children
who have experienced seizures and other signs of encephalopathy
within hours or days of vaccination, especially after being
injected with pertussis containing vaccines (DTaP),61
are being denied vaccine injury compensation because government
officials argue that vaccinations simply "triggered" the brain
deterioration process and the child's spontaneously defective
genes are solely to blame.62,63,64,65,66,67
And now, when a special master in the U.S. Court of Claims
does award compensation for a pertussis vaccine injury,
it is appealed by the government so that financial assistance is
taken away from the child and parents raising their vaccine
handicapped child.68
But, not all children with de novo genetic mutations go on to
develop seizure disorders and brain dysfunction. A normally
developing child might have continued to develop normally for
many years if the pertussis vaccine or other vaccines had not
been given, but doctors do not screen children for genetic
susceptibility before vaccinating them.69
NCVIA of 1986 Says Susceptible Children Should Be Compensated
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act specifies that
children with pre-existing conditions made worse after
vaccination are not disqualified from receiving vaccine
injury compensation.70,71
That is because susceptible children with underlying health
conditions, who develop catastrophic brain injuries after
receiving government recommended and mandated vaccines, are
precisely the ones who should be the first to be
awarded uncontested federal vaccine injury compensation!
We All Have Unique Genetic, Biological, and Environmental
Differences
Public health officials are well aware that we are all unique
individuals and that there are genetic, biological, and
environmental differences among us, including those that
increase our susceptibility to prescription drug and vaccine
reactions.72,73,74,75,76,77
Scientists do not know how, why or when genetic mutations
spontaneously occur and cause harm.78,79,80
Environmental exposures are thought to play a key role in de
novo genetic mutations, but they are still unexplained in part
because the complex science of epigenetics is still in its
infancy. Scientists are just beginning to understand that our
health is not only affected by the genes we inherit from our
parents; our genes are turned on and off and mutate due to
environmental exposures and health choices our parents and
grandparents made and that we are exposed to our make during our
own life.81,82,83,84,85
Dravet Syndrome: Susceptibility to Seizures After Vaccination
Children diagnosed with Dravet syndrome,86,87
for example, have a rare de novo genetic mutation that
predisposes them to develop medication-resistant seizures and
subsequent brain damage, and an estimated 2.5 percent of
children who develop seizures after vaccination carry the
mutation.88,89,90
Those children are often perfectly healthy until they experience
their first seizure – with or without fever – after a round of
vaccinations.91,92
And yet, children in the U.S. are not being screened for
Dravet or any other genetic susceptibility that can trigger
seizures and other reactions before doctors give them
vaccines.93
In fact, some doctors insisting on "no exceptions" vaccine use
policies have insisted that children with Dravet continue to be
vaccinated on schedule even after they develop vaccine-related
seizure disorders.94
They are the same doctors alleging that vaccines do not cause
brain damage just because a small percentage of children with de
novo mutations associated with Dravet syndrome develop seizures
after vaccination!95
No Science Evaluating the Vaccine Schedule or Genetic Mutations
After Vaccination
The 1986 law requires the Secretary of DHHS to:
- "[P]romote the development of childhood vaccines
that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than
those on the market on Dec. 22, 1987, and promote the
refinement of such vaccines;" and
- "[T]o make or assure improvements in, and otherwise
use the authorities of the Secretary with respect to, the
licensing, manufacturing, processing, testing, labeling,
warning, use instructions, distribution, storage,
administration, field surveillance, adverse reaction
reporting, and recall of reactogenic lots or batches, of
vaccines, and research on vaccines, in order to reduce the
risks of adverse reactions to vaccines."96
After 30 years, why has Congress failed to enforce that
clarion call for research to reduce the risks of adverse
reactions to vaccines? Where is the biological mechanism
research measuring changes in immune and brain function at the
cellular and molecular level when vaccines cause injury and
death?
Where are the pathological profiles to help doctors and
coroners separate "coincidence" from vaccine induced brain
injury and death?
Where are the studies investigating whether genetic mutations
are occurring in a fetus or a pregnant woman after four vaccines
are given during the first trimester; or after newborns are
given a dose of hepatitis B vaccine on the first day of life; or
after a baby has been given 24 vaccinations by age six months;
or after a two year old has been given a total of 45 government
recommended vaccinations?
Where is the basic science research to compare de novo
mutations and chromosomal damage in children and adults before
and after vaccination?
Clearly, that knowledge is not important to public health
officials and doctors, who have not conducted methodologically
sound studies proving that the federal childhood vaccine
schedule of 69 doses of 16 vaccines is safe.97
The refusal by government to compare long-term health outcomes
of vaccinated and unvaccinated children to find out exactly who
is genetically more susceptible to suffering vaccine harm and if
there are differences in the numbers of de novo genetic
mutations experienced by vaccinated and unvaccinated children,
is indefensible.
NVIC Submits Statements on VICP to GAO and ACCV
In November 2014, the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report
for Congress that affirmed what parents of vaccine injured
children have been saying for years.98
Part of that GAO report included information provided by the
National Vaccine Information Center in a July 2014 referenced
statement submitted to GAO.99
In September 2014, NVIC additionally submitted a referenced
statement to the
Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) protesting
the systematic gutting of the definition of encephalopathy and
Vaccine Injury Table by CDC officials using rule making
authority for the express purpose of denying vaccine injured
children federal compensation.100
Both of these NVIC-referenced statements can be read on
NVIC.org.
NVIC Provides Evidence to GAO and ACCV for Betrayal of Trust
In NVIC's statements to GAO and ACCV, we reviewed the history
of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and
provided evidence for why that law has become a betrayal of
public trust:
FACT: By 2015, over $3 billion in
federal compensation had been awarded to more than 4,000
child and adult vaccine victims but two out of three
children applying for federal vaccine injury compensation
have been turned down, even though there is a $3 billion
dollar surplus in the Vaccine Injury Trust Fund;101,102
FACT: Between 1988 and 1995, vaccine
injured children were receiving awards through an
administrative procedure. However, when CDC officials
changed the rules for obtaining compensation in 1995,
including rewriting the definition of encephalopathy, the
system became highly adversarial. Today, almost no vaccine
injured child can qualify for an uncontested award,
especially if they exhibited signs of brain inflammation
after vaccination and were permanently brain injured.
FACT: Today, 80 percent of vaccine
injury compensation awards are given to adults disabled by
flu shots, and only 20 percent of awards are given to
children legally required to get vaccinated to attend
daycare or school;
FACT: Most vaccine injury claims take
many years to adjudicate because the Departments of Health
and Justice use taxpayer dollars to fight against awarding
compensation for the majority of children and adults who
apply;
FACT: Parents are not being informed by
government officials or doctors about the very short two to
three year deadlines for filing a vaccine injury
compensation claim for their child, so most parents don't
even know they can file a claim and often miss the filing
deadline. On NVIC.org, you can read two outside consultant
reports (Banyan103
and Altarum104)
that have independently confirmed that federal health
officials have failed to publicize the existence of a
vaccine injury compensation program;
FACT: Federal officials are not
transparent with the public about details of vaccine injury
awards, even though this is a requirement in the law;
FACT: Many pediatricians and other
vaccine providers refuse to comply with the informing,
recording, and reporting of vaccine safety provisions in the
law. In fact, pediatrician members of the American Academy
of Pediatrics and other medical trade industry groups are
refusing to give children medical care if their parents do
not get them vaccinated according to the CDC schedule.
The VICP Failed Experiment in Tort Reform Should Be Repealed
The vaccine injury compensation program has been a failed
experiment in tort reform for many years and it is long past
time for a congressional investigation.105
Years of neglect and failure to provide oversight on a law that
parents were promised would be "simple justice for children" has
allowed government with the help of industry to break the
program apart to the point where it cannot – and should not – be
salvaged. Protecting profit-making corporations from product
liability, especially when they partner with government to
mandate use of their products, is a bad idea.
It is time to repeal the 1986 law, and again hold
pharmaceutical corporations accountable for the risks and
failures of vaccine products in a civil court of law.
Without a legal check and balance on companies whose products
are mandated by government, vaccines that cause harm and fail to
work can stay on the market and people can be exploited,
especially when government vaccine policies fail to respect
biodiversity and end up selecting the genetically vulnerable for
sacrifice.
Defend the Human Right to Informed Consent to Vaccine Risk
Taking
The broken social contract with parents by government that at
its core is a profound betrayal of public trust, is one more
reason why it is so important for Americans to defend the human
right to exercise voluntary informed consent to medical risk
taking, especially vaccine risk taking. If we don't protect our
legal right to know and freedom to choose now, we will be held
captive by corporations and government throwing the most vaccine
vulnerable among us under the bus.
Go to
NVIC.org and
NVICAdvocacy.org today and find out how you can work with
others in your state to secure and protect flexible medical,
religious, and conscientious belief exemptions in vaccine laws.
It's your health. Your family. Your choice.
© Copyright 1997-2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights
Reserved.