The claims that autism is caused by vaccines have been completely
disproven, right? We have all heard that claim, maybe most famously by
actress and model Jenny McCarthy.
But is the claim untrue? What if I told you that while HHS says there
is no link between autism and vaccinations, the federal government has
quietly awarded families of autistic children damages as a result of
vaccine injuries?
The first step toward truth is to be informed.
The story we are talking about today is something that just doesn’t
get attention from the mainstream media, and on the rare occasion when
it does, the story is predictable. Scandal surrounding a doctor who
claims autism and vaccines are linked. The bizarre parents who believe
that their child has autism because of a vaccine, a claim clearly not
based in science.
But is there more to this story than what the media has told you?
The real story behind vaccines begins in 1986.
That is because it was in 1986 when the U.S. Congress created
National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Now that alone is worthy of a
story, because what most Americans don’t know is that a family who has
child injured by a vaccine, cannot simply sue the vaccine maker. Under
this 1986 law, Congress took that power away from families and instead
created a “vaccine court” if you will.
So what is the vaccine court? It is a Federal Claim’s court that
deals specifically with vaccine cases where families can go for injury
compensation if their child is injured by a vaccine.
The official name, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (“VICP”). Of
course, this program is seen as necessary because virtually every child
who attends a pre-school, daycare or public or private school is
required to be vaccinated.
So what’s the problem?
In 1986 when the VICP was first created vaccine makers were protected
from lawsuit by the public. The VICP insulates vaccine manufacturers
from liability and requires that petitioners bring their petitions
solely against HHS. They may not sue manufacturers or healthcare
practitioners. The rationale for this industry and professional
protection was to ensure a stable childhood vaccine supply and to keep
prices affordable.
The 1986 Law also permits the vaccine makers the right to not disclose known risks
to parents or guardians of those being vaccinated. Based on something
called the “learned intermediary” doctrine, manufacturers bear no
liability for giving, or failing to give, accurate or complete
information to those vaccinated.
In exchange for being subject to the vaccine court, families of those
injured would be compensated through an administrative process based on
a table of presumptive vaccine injuries.
At its outset, 90% of claims were “on table.” But almost 30 years
later, things are very different. Today, the vaccine schedule, meaning
the list of vaccines offered to children has tripled, but the table of
injuries has become much more restrictive, forcing 90% of petitioners
into “off-table” litigation. And it gets worse. Because for families who
believe that their children have been injured by vaccines, there are
enormous roadblocks to overcome when seeking compensation for those
injuries.
Mark Blaxill is the father of an autistic child. A child who he says
has been injured by vaccines. Blaxill is part of a group called the
Canary Party, a coalition of parents who are pushing for changes to the
system through political means.
Blaxill: The Canary Party is a social movement that’s created to
stand up for the victims of medical injuries, environmental toxins,
industrial foods, the things that care causing these new health crises
and epidemics that we are seeing.
Swann: Let’s talk about this issue of the Vaccine Injury Compensation
Program because most Americans, I would guess have no idea that this
even exists.
Blaxill: Well, the thing that people should know about the VICP is
that it is unlike any other product liability circumstance that any of
us deal with on a regular basis. In 1986, Congress passed a law that
gave a blanket exemption to pharmaceutical companies from any liability
at all for any injury that their products, in this case vaccines, may
cause to consumers and especially to children and infants. And what that
did, was that put in place a liability shield on the pharmaceutical
industry unlike any other pharmaceutical product categories so that if
anything wrong happens to any recipient of the vaccine, what the family
has to do is to, instead of just going to regular civil court with all
the normal checks and balances and procedures and protections we see in
the American legal system, they are forced to petition of government to
recognize the injury to their child and to decide on whether or not they
deserve an compensation.
So for parents, like Blaxill, why does he believe the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has failed?
That goes back to 2002 when nearly five thousand families filed
petitions with the VICP claiming that vaccines had caused their
children’s neurological disorder called “autism.”
According to the Pace Law Review, in an unprecedented proceeding, the
VICP created and conducted the Omnibus Autism Proceeding that concluded
in 2010. That means instead of taking the cases one at at time, they
consolidated hearings for all these families. in the end, the VICP
dismissed all the “test case” claims of vaccine-induced autism.
Blaxill: The original intent of the VICP was to provide a no fault,
generous, rapid program of compensating victims. Now what we have a is a
cover up. And a situation in which the government is trying to say,
these things which people think they have observed, not only are we
going to discount it, we are going to treat it with prejudice. We are
going to say…
Swann: That this person is trying to get over on the system, that they are gaming the system.
Blaxill: That they are gaming the system, they are trying to blame,
they are trying to get money from the government and that’s just wrong.
But there is more… A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced
Brain Injury finds that The VICP has compensated approximately 2,500
claims of vaccine injury since the inception of the program in 1986.
Since that time, despite the official ruling that there is no link
between vaccines and autism, there have been at least 83 cases of autism
among those compensated for vaccine-induced brain damage.
Swann: The last thing that I would ask you is that in terms of
outcomes what are you all hoping for? Because this is really a fight for
other families, a fight for an entire generation of Americans, is it
not?
Blaxill: We are asking for justice because you have many, many
injured children and families that are struggling and they deserve
support. We’re asking for awareness of this crisis in this health
system. We have the worst outcomes in the entire industrial world here
in America. We have the highest cost healthcare system, the most
interventionist healthcare system in terms of medication and
vaccination. We have a dramatic disfunction and we need awareness of
that, that we have a problem and we need to shine a light on that. And
then we need change. We need fundamental renovation of our way of
dealing with parental choice, with the rights of consumers, authority in
the healthcare system. Who gets to choose and then we need to find ways
to treat and heal all those injured children and now adults who are
suffering from this system.
What you need to know
Is that on the Department of Health and Human services website is this statement:
“HHS has never concluded in any case that autism was caused by vaccination.”
Parents point out that while number and use of vaccines is
skyrocketing, the number of autism cases is skyrocketing as well. But
remember, correlation does not equal causation. Agencies like HHS will
say that doctors and medical professionals are just better at
recognizing autism than they used to be and that may be true. But as one
parent told me, while public statements have been made that there is no
research supporting the assertion that vaccines can cause autism,
families point to dozens of studies that do find a link between vaccines
and autism that public health officials do not share with the public.
And that families would like to present in a civil court, before a jury,
which believe is their right under the Constitution.