{"id":121745,"date":"2019-04-29T11:15:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T15:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=121745"},"modified":"2019-04-29T11:17:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T15:17:22","slug":"4-billion-and-growing-u-s-payouts-for-vaccine-injuries-and-deaths-keep-climbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=121745","title":{"rendered":"$4 Billion and Growing: U.S. Payouts for Vaccine Injuries and Deaths Keep Climbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By the Children\u2019s Health Defense Team<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Health Resources & Services Administration just released new dollar figures reflecting payouts from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The payouts for vaccine injuries just went past\u00a0the whopping $4 billion mark.\u00a0Using the government\u2019s own conclusion that only 1% of all vaccine injuries are reported, the $4 billion is just the tip of the iceberg. Despite assurances from CDC and our Federal agencies that all vaccines are safe, the payouts say otherwise. Vaccine injuries can and do happen\u2014to previously healthy children and adults. Consumers deserve to know the facts about the full range of vaccine risks.<\/em><\/p>\n

In most public health communications about vaccination, officials gloss over vaccine risks, dismissing any possible \u201cside effects\u201d as\u00a0mild<\/a>. However, vaccination programs have always resulted in more serious vaccine injuries\u00a0for some<\/a>. In the 1970s and early 1980s, for example, the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) vaccine and its whole-cell pertussis component had chalked up so much vaccine damage that a television documentary likened receiving a DPT shot to playing \u201cvaccine roulette<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the DPT debacle began attracting widespread attention, vaccine manufacturers started pressuring Congress for protection from vaccine injury lawsuits. Congress obliged. In 1986, President Reagan signed into existence a radical piece of legislation\u2014the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA)\u2014which launched what the Act described as an \u201calternative remedy to judicial action<\/a>\u00a0for specified vaccine-related injuries.\u201d A key component of the legislation involved creating the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), which was given responsibility for deciding (through the workings of a special \u201cvaccine court<\/a>\u201d) whether specific injuries and individuals would be eligible for financial compensation.<\/p>\n

While government-funded Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers vigorously represent and defend the interests of HHS and vaccine manufacturers, the consumer-unfriendly system forces the vaccine-injured to meet an exceptionally high burden of proof.<\/p>\n

Over the vaccine court\u2019s 30-year history, individuals and families have filed over\u00a020,000 petitions <\/a>for vaccine injury compensation. This month, even as 12% of filed petitions remained unadjudicated, the payouts crossed over the\u00a0$4 billion<\/strong>\u00a0threshold<\/strong><\/a>. This amount was awarded in response to barely a third (31% or 6,276) of the filed petitions. There is no telling how much more money the taxpayer-funded program might have shelled out if the court had not chosen to dismiss the remaining petitions (56%)\u2014possibly doing so\u00a0fraudulently<\/a>\u00a0in at least some cases.<\/p>\n

Running the Gauntlet<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the three decades, despite the stated\u00a0intent<\/a>\u00a0to furnish an \u201caccessible and efficient forum for individuals found to be injured by certain vaccines,\u201d the NVICP has devolved into a protracted and litigious David-versus-Goliath battleground. The vaccine court, in actuality, is \u201cnot a court at all but\u2026a\u00a0consumer-funded government claims program<\/a>\u00a0that uses\u2026employees of Health and Human Services (HHS), rather than judges to make decisions on compensation.\u201d While government-funded Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers vigorously represent and defend the interests of HHS and vaccine manufacturers, the consumer-unfriendly system forces the vaccine-injured to meet an exceptionally high burden of proof. For dismissed claims, there is no assurance that the program will even cover\u00a0attorneys\u2019 fees and costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s Health Defense recently\u00a0called attention<\/a>\u00a0to a glaring example of the NVICP\u2019s pro-industry and anti-vaccine-injured bias. In 2007 and 2008, DOJ attorneys exhibited \u201chighly unethical and appallingly consequential official misconduct<\/a>\u201d during an Omnibus Autism Proceeding (OAP) orchestrated to determine the fate of 5,400 families who had filed claims for vaccine-induced autism. The potential value of the claims exceeded\u00a0$100 billion<\/a>\u2014an amount that \u201cwould have bankrupted the [compensation] program many times over.\u201d HHS\u2019s Department of Justice lawyers, \u201cunder pressure\u201d to deprive petitioners of their rightful relief, successfully achieved that aim through allegedly fraudulent means. In September 2018, Children\u2019s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rolf Hazlehurst (parent of one of the vaccine-injured children involved in the OAP) requested that the DOJ Inspector General and Congress investigate this fraud and obstruction of justice by HHS and DOJ officials.<\/p>\n

Individuals who file claims with VICP must meet specific \u201cmedical criteria\u201d and are out of luck unless their illness, disability, injury or condition is covered in the NVICP\u2019s\u00a0Vaccine Injury Table<\/a>and manifests within a specified time frame. As an illustration of the difficulties that NVICP petitioners may encounter, consider someone who experiences myocarditis (heart inflammation) following vaccination. A 2018\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0BMJ Case Reports<\/em>\u00a0recently observed that myocarditis is one of \u201cthe more serious vaccine-related sequela\u201d and \u201chas been reported following many different vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another recent\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0in a European medical journal describes post-vaccination reports of myopericarditis (inflammation of both the pericardium and the heart muscle) and other autoimmune disorders and offers two extremely plausible mechanisms \u201cby which vaccines can cause autoimmune reactions.\u201d In the Vaccine Injury Table, however, the only place where cardiac symptoms are mentioned is in connection with\u00a0anaphylaxis<\/a>\u2014with the table\u2019s notes indicating that \u201cthere are no specific pathological findings to confirm a diagnosis of anaphylaxis\u201d\u2014and most autoimmune illnesses are also conspicuously absent.<\/p>\n

Tip of the Iceberg<\/strong><\/p>\n

By anyone\u2019s accounting, the\u00a0$4 billion<\/strong>\u00a0paid out to date by the NVICP is an attention-getting amount of money. However, that amount pales in comparison to the billions of dollars\u2019 worth of autism claims that the vaccine court unfairly dismissed. According to HHS, moreover, \u201cfewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are\u00a0reported<\/a>,\u201d and studies confirm that many health providers are\u00a0unfamiliar<\/a>\u00a0with the system for reporting vaccine injuries. The shocking underreporting of vaccine injuries also fails to account for the fact that one in six individuals who experience an \u201cadverse event following immunization\u201d (AEFI) have a\u00a0recurrence<\/a>\u00a0with subsequent vaccination, often rated as \u201cmore severe than the initial AEFI.\u201d If even a small percentage of these unreported and recurrent vaccine injuries were brought forward for compensation, the entire NVICP house of cards\u2014and the CDC\u2019s deceptive claims of unassailable vaccine safety\u2014would crumble.<\/p>\n

A Gold Rush: Liability Protection Encourages More Vaccines<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead, whether intended or not, the end result of the 1986 Act and the NVICP has been to create a \u201cgold rush<\/a>\u201d environment that encourages manufacturers to develop even more vaccines, while conveniently exempting them from liability for the injuries and deaths that result from their powerful immune-system-altering products. With no incentive to make vaccines safe and a large and lucrative market guaranteed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s childhood vaccine schedule\u2014as well as a growing effort to foist unnecessary and dangerous vaccines on\u00a0adults<\/a>\u2014vaccine manufacturers appear to have it made. The public and vaccine safety advocates must continue to remind the government that the approximately 6,300 claims that have been compensated over the NVICP\u2019s 30-year history represent the very tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

___
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