While safety should be priority #1, it’s nothing more than a footnote
Government is betraying too many young people and families
LOS ANGELES—The safety of all our sons and daughters should have always been priority #1 when it came to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA), says Conscience Coalition. Tragically, it has never been more than a footnote.
Instead of codifying vaccine safety, Congress gave vaccine makers immunity from civil liability from the “massive increase in vaccine-inflicted injuries and deaths” and codified a federal compensation program for victims.
“After reading the federal law of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that affirmed it, and the actions of federal and state governments since then, can anyone say with a straight face that safety has been a priority? So how can anyone support the effective elimination of medical exemptions, which is what California Senate Bill (SB) 276 will do?” questioned Jonathan Lockwood, executive director of Conscience Coalition. “Our governments have betrayed our young people. The year I was born was the first year a mandated vaccine safety report was supposed to be sent to Congress by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—it’s never happened.”
Vaccine safety was not even mentioned as a purpose of the NCVIA by the 2011 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth. But the opinion made it clear that successful claimants (victims of vaccine-inflicted injuries and deaths) would “receive compensation for medical, rehabilitation, counseling, special education, and vocational training expenses; diminished earning capacity; pain and suffering; and $250,000 for vaccine-related deaths.”
Quoting further from the majority in that case:
“Further evidence comes from FDA’s regulations—more than 90 of them—that pervasively regulate the manufacturing process, down to the requirements for plumbing and ventilation systems at each manufacturing facility. Material noncompliance with any one of them, or with any other FDA regulation, could cost the manufacturer its regulatory-compliance defense. Design defects, in contrast, do not merit a single mention in the NCVIA or the FDA’s regulations. Indeed, the FDA has never even spelled out in regulations the criteria it uses to decide whether a vaccine is safe and effective for its intended use.” Further, the NCVIA, “which in every other respect micromanages manufacturers, is silent on how to evaluate competing designs.”
Quoting from Justices Sotomayor and Bader Ginsberg in their dissent:
“… Congress has never directed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or any other federal agency to review vaccines for optimal vaccine design.” Further, “Although the Vaccine Act charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with the obligation to ‘promote the development of childhood vaccines’ and ‘make or assure improvements in … vaccines, and research on vaccines,’ … neither the Act nor any other provision of federal law places a legal duty on vaccine manufacturers to improve the design of their vaccines to account for scientific and technological advances. Indeed, the FDA does not condition approval of a vaccine on it being the most optimally designed among reasonably available alternatives, nor does it (or any other federal entity) ensure that licensed vaccines keep pace with technological and scientific advances.”
As a result of this “safety as a footnote” approach to mandatory vaccines, since 1988, over 20,913 petitions have been filed with the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Over that 30-year time period, 18,070 petitions have been adjudicated, with 6,706 of those determined to be compensable. Total compensation paid over the life of the program now stands at $4.2 billion.
While this number may sound big, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. A 2011 Harvard Pilgrim Health study commissioned by the CDC revealed less than 1 percent of adverse events from vaccines are reported.
If SB 276 passes and is signed into law, medical exemptions from mandatory vaccines will be effectively eliminated. California will see an increase in the number of injuries and deaths caused by these vaccines that cannot be made safe.
“Mark my words, if California lawmakers think they can vote yes on this bill—for political expediency—and then hold their hands up down the road and say, ‘I didn’t know what was going to happen as a result’—they’re in for a rude awakening,” said Lockwood. “As the number of vaccine-inflicted injuries and deaths pile up, the public is learning more about what is really happening. There will be a reckoning. Lawmakers who vote ‘yes’ are making themselves liable for every injury and death that results from the effective elimination of medical exemptions in California.”
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About Conscience Coalition
Conscience Coalition is a nonpartisan nonprofit pulling together like-minded groups from across America to increase the 3 Cs—Communication, Cooperation and Coordination—to unite and win. The organization is focused on bringing together conscience rights and medical freedom groups in California through grassroots organizing, activism and education.
