Sign the petition to tell U.S. lawmakers it’s time to shield U.S. children from harm and hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for vaccine injury and death.
President Biden asked Congress at his first State of the Union address to “repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued.”[1]
Our president was wrong. The vaccine industry has enjoyed a shield from liability since 1986. When a child is injured by a vaccine or the COVID shot, there’s no opportunity for a lawsuit.
There are six exceptions to the gun industry liability shield, meaning a gun manufacturer can be sued in a court of law, even if it’s difficult. In contrast, since the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act took effect in 1988, any attempt to bring a case involving vaccine injury in a court has failed.
Any claimed injuries after vaccination go to “Vaccine Court” where Special Masters with no scientific or medical training decide whether injury was due to a vaccine. Since 1988, there have been 24,778 vaccine injury petitions filed — 8,696 of which were compensated.[2] That’s a minimum of almost 25,000 American children and families whose fate was determined by an administrative court — with decisions unavailable to the public — rather than having access to trial by jury.
As of February 2022, there are over 800,000 injuries reported to VAERS after a COVID shot. This amounts to over half of all reported injuries from all vaccines combined since 1988. Clearly, not all of the 800,000+ reports will turn into injury claims, but many will. Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, or any other manufacturer will not be held financially responsible for any devastation caused by COVID shots, despite astronomical, record-breaking profits from the shots.
As a community, let’s show that we want liability protections removed from the pharmaceutical industry to restore accountability for any harm to our children. Once we get to 100,000 signatures, Stand for Health Freedom will present the petition to key Congressional representatives.
The multinational pharmaceutical corporations that manufacture and distribute vaccines in the U.S. benefit from extraordinary market access and almost complete legal protections. The federal government recommends a childhood vaccine schedule of over 70 doses of 17 vaccines. Guided by this schedule, all 50 states mandate vaccines for day care and school admission. Primary care physicians administer vaccines to children according to the federal schedule as standard-of-care medicine, starting in hospitals on the day of birth. Health insurance plans and government entitlement programs cover the cost of vaccines.
Most notably, the streamlined and subsidized reach to 72 million American children [3] that vaccine makers enjoy is nearly liability-free. After years of industry lobbying, President Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (“1986 Act”) into law. Vaccine makers had threatened to stop manufacturing vaccines because they were tired of paying brand-damaging, multi-million-dollar payments to settle lawsuits for injuries and death caused by vaccines. Following passage of the 1986 Act, if an American child is injured or dies following the administration of a federally recommended childhood vaccine, the family is barred from suing the manufacturer of the vaccine or the health care professional who administered it.[4]
In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court held that parents whose children were catastrophically injured or died from vaccines could not sue for design defect liability. In other words, even though the federal government acknowledges vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe,”[5] causing irreversible harm and death to some who receive them, the financial responsibility for the injured children’s care belongs to the parents even in cases where the vaccine had a bad design. The sole recourse for families is the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (“Vaccine Court”), established as part of the 1986 Act.[6] Parents describe Vaccine Court as an unwieldy and burdensome administrative program that does not afford due process. There’s no judge or jury of peers and the normal rules of evidence are relaxed. Without very specific circumstances of injury or death following a narrowly defined set of criteria, no compensation is awarded. In the history of the program, only approximately a third of cases have been compensated — even though the Vaccine Court was designed by Congress to be a streamlined process and less stressful than litigation to compensate those who would inevitably be injured by an “unavoidably unsafe,” one-size-fits-all pharmaceutical.
The no-liability childhood vaccine program is a threat to individuals and public health. It incentivizes the pharmaceutical industry to lobby for new vaccines and extra doses without the need to invest resources into making the safest and most effective vaccines possible. Since the passage of the removal of liability by the 1986 Act, there has been more than a three-fold increase in the number of vaccines on the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule.
Parents and advocates argued strongly for the 1986 Act to include language that protects a consumer’s right to sue the drug manufacturer when the Vaccine Court denies federal compensation, or when the company has access to the technology to make a safer product but declined to do so. All stakeholders understood the vital role of accountability in a court of law as the pivotal assurance safeguarding the safety of American children. Parents wanted it and industry didn’t. Industry prevailed.
Before the 1986 Act was passed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood vaccine schedule recommended 23 doses of vaccines between 2 months and 16 years of age,[7] with the pharmaceutical industry profiting about 750 million dollars annually. After 30+ years of no liability, the schedule has grown to over 70 recommended doses between pregnancy and 18 years of age.[8] The global vaccine market reached $38 billion in 2018 and is poised to exceed $70 billion by 2025, representing a robust compound annual growth rate approaching 10%.[9] The U.S. market accounts for over one third of total market share and U.S. pharmaceutical corporations rely on a robust and growing domestic market to sell vaccines overseas. If you have children today and choose to follow the CDC’s recommended schedule, your babies will receive more doses of vaccines by the time they are six months old than most baby boomers received by the time they went to college. Over half of these 70+ doses are given by 15 months of age.
To date, the Vaccine Court has paid out approximately $4.7 billion in compensation for harm and death caused by vaccines.[10] The Vaccine Court is an obligatory administrative program (in lieu of legal recourse) to give families an avenue for potential compensation and a level of justice for government-mandated vaccinations. The existence of the Vaccine Court, however, does not justify the indemnification of the pharmaceutical industry nor is it adequate protection for the health of our children and future generations.
American parents must make it a top priority to see certain sections of the 1986 Act repealed so that pharmaceutical companies can be held accountable for the safety of their products. Vaccine hesitancy is one of the top health concerns facing not just the citizens of America but of the world, according to organizations such as the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Health Institute, the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Congress. Leaders of these organizations are looking for solutions to vaccine hesitancy by enforcing stricter vaccine mandates and the eroding of constitutional rights such as parental choice and religious freedoms. Will American parents tolerate the violation of human rights? Citizens are rising up and asking the hard questions about vaccine safety. We have lived with the ramifications of the liability protections implemented as part of the 1986 Act. It’s now time to shield U.S. children. Let’s keep vaccine manufacturers honest and our children safe.
Tell the President of the United States and Congress that vaccine hesitancy will continue to grow so long as there is no incentive for vaccine manufacturers to make the safest product possible. We uphold the preservation of human rights, legal due process, and alignment of interests through free market forces, especially when it comes to products mandated for American children.
Sign the petition and share it with your friends today to stand for the health of our children and future generations!
[1] State of the Union address 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2022/
[2] https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/vicp-monthly-report-template-02-01-22.pdf
[3] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01
[4]42 U.S.C. § 300aa-22
[5] Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, LLC, 131 S. Ct. 1068, 1082 (2011)
[6] National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (PL99-660)
[7] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/images/schedule1983s.jpg
[8] https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/vicp-monthly-report-template-02-01-22.pdf
[9]https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/03/07/1749613/0/en/Vaccines-Market-worth-over-70bn-by-2025-Global-Market-Insights-Inc.html
[10] https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/vicp-stats-03-01-22.pdf