US “Vaccine Court” Has Paid over 3 Billion Dollars to Vaccine-Injured Families 🚑👶🏽👶🏻🤫

Since 1988, the US government program VICP (Vaccine Injury Compensation Program) has paid $3.9 billion to around 6,000 individuals and families for injuries and deaths attributed to shots for flu, diphtheria, whooping cough, and other conditions. Over that 29-year time period, 17,281 petitions have been adjudicated, with 6,085 of those determined to be compensable, while 11,196 were dismissed. Total compensation paid over the life of the program is approximately $3.9 billion. 

Though vaccines “remain one of the greatest success stories in public health,” Tracy Seipel reported, “for some Americans, rare side effects of inoculations have led to hardship, serious injury, and even death.”

On NPR’s All Things Considered, high-profile lawsuits against drug companies in the 1980s successfully charged that children immunized with the (DTP) vaccine experienced adverse reactions, including seizures and brain damage, leading to at least two court settlements worth millions of dollars. In response, drug companies threatened to stop producing vaccines for the US market because litigation risks were too great unless the government provided them with “no-fault” protection. NPR quoted Anna Kirkland, a professor of women’s studies and political science at the University of Michigan: “There was a real fear that some of our childhood vaccines would no longer be available.”

In 1986, that fear led Congress to establish the little-known Office of The "Vaccine Court". Also known as (Special Masters of the US Court of Federal Claims and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program). NPR reported that the court administers a “no-fault compensation program that serves as an alternative to the traditional U.S. court system.” The vaccine court served to “shield the vaccine makers from liability.” It also created a fund to compensate injured vaccine recipients, through a 75-cent surcharge on every vaccine dose, stated by Anna Kirkland from NPR news.

As the NPR report also explained, “Petitioners don’t have to prove that the immunization caused their condition—the court operates under a presumption of causation if the injury develops within a certain period of time.” To win a claim, petitioners must provide proof of developing a condition listed on a vaccine injury table. Settlements for conditions not included in the table require a higher burden of proof. But, as Seipel reported, the other restriction that petitioners face is filing within strict time limits. A petition must be filed within three years of the first symptoms, within two years of death, or within four years after the first symptom of a vaccine-related injury that resulted in death.

The problem of the time limit is two-fold. First, and most fundamentally, most people simply do not know about the government’s vaccine-injury compensation program, and they may not learn about it in time to petition. Second, in cases where parents allege that a vaccine has injured a child of theirs, the full extent of the injury may not be known until the child is older. As Anna Kirkland, the Michigan professor who has studied the vaccine court, told NPR, publicizing the vaccine court and injury compensation program creates a dilemma: Once critics see compensation settlements, they conclude that “vaccines are dangerous and you shouldn’t vaccinate.” If the court were to achieve greater visibility, especially regarding payouts to injured patients, the public might conclude that vaccines are more generally dangerous than significant research and evidence indicates.

Jessica Boehm of Cronkite News reported that vaccine information statements, which include information about both possible side effects and the vaccine compensation program, are provided to patients before each shot. However, few people read the fine print. According to Drew Downing, a lawyer who specializes in vaccine injury cases, “That’s really the only place that the vaccine program is really ever talked about.” As Seipel reported, other critics have noted that, when patients seek medical attention for an adverse reaction, they should be informed about the court system and compensation program.

Since 2002, the Washington Post has published a handful of editorials, opinion pieces, and letters to the editor that have addressed the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. In 2009 it ran a front-page article on the vaccine court’s finding of no link between vaccines and autism in children. Coverage of the vaccine court and its injury program in the New York Times appears to have been limited to a single story from 1994, sourced from the Associated Press, on a new vaccine for whooping cough, which mentioned the program and compensation fund in passing.

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Vaccine Injury Compensation Data

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html

Anders Kelto, “Vaccine Court Aims to Protect Patients and Vaccines,” All Things Considered (NPR), broadcast June 2, 2015, edited transcript, http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/02/411243242/vaccine-court-aims-to-protect-patients-and-vaccines.

Tracy Seipel, “Vaccine Battles Call New Attention to Obscure Compensation Court,” Marin Independent Journal, August 2, 2015, http://www.marinij.com/article/NO/20150802/NEWS/150809969.

Jessica Boehm, “Vaccine Injury Fund Tops $3.5 Billion, as Patients Fight for Payment,” Cronkite News (Arizona PBS), May 8, 2015, http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2015/05/vaccine-injury-fund-tops-3-5-billion-as-patients-fight-for-payment/.

Student Researchers: Brittany Oldham, Dorsa Abyaneh, and Emiko Osaka (San Francisco State University)

Faculty Evaluator: Kenn Burrows (San Francisco State University)