NVIC Vaccine News

NVIC Cites "Betrayal" of Consumers by U.S. Supreme Court Decision Giving Total Liability Shield to Big Pharma

By NVIC Administrator
Published February 25, 2011 in Public Health Law & Courts


February 23, 2011 08:03 AM Eastern Time  WASHINGTON--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), whose co-founders worked with Congress on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (PL-99-660), is calling yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision giving drug companies total liability protection for injuries and deaths caused by government mandated vaccines a “betrayal” of the American consumer.

In a 6-2 decision, the Court majority voted to reject substantial evidence in the Act’s legislative history that the 99th Congress fully intended to protect an American’s right to sue a pharmaceutical corporation for injuries that could have been prevented if the company had elected to make a safer vaccine.

NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher, said “Parents of vaccine injured children, who worked in good faith with Congress in the early 1980’s on the 1986 law, have been betrayed by six American judges, who ignored congressional intent and threw victims of vaccine injury under the bus in order to give complete liability protection to a wealthy industry with a long history of hiding their products’ risks. They have removed the safety net we were promised. If we had known this day would come, we would have vigorously opposed any federal legislation that limited civil liability for drug corporations now making substantial profits from vaccines mandated by government.”

Hannah Bruesewitz was brain injured by DPT vaccine as a child but she was denied compensation by the U.S. Court of Claims, which administers the federal vaccine injury compensation program created by the 1986 Act that has turned away two out of three plaintiffs. Her attorneys then sued in civil court, providing evidence that Wyeth-Lederle had the technology to produce a less reactive, purified pertussis vaccine but declined to do so.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has removed all financial incentive for multi-national pharmaceutical corporations, which enjoy a $20 billion dollar business, to make vaccines as safe as they can be,” said Fisher. “This is a sad day for all Americans forced by law to use dozens of doses of vaccines or be barred from school or health insurance or employment. The only leverage left to American consumers to ensure that vaccines with the fewest health risks are produced is to oppose vaccine mandates and work to defend vaccine exemptions in all public health laws.”

The National Vaccine Information Center is a non-profit charity founded in 1982 to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education. NVIC co-founders were responsible for inclusion of vaccine safety and research provisions in the 1986 Act, including theVaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, and for ensuring that the Act protected the right of those injured by vaccines to access the civil court system if they were turned down for compensation or offered too little to meet their lifetime medical care needs.

NVIC has been critical of the failure of the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to implement the 1986 law in accordance with legislative language, history and congressional intent. For more information, go to www.NVIC.org.

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17 Responses to "NVIC Cites "Betrayal" of Consumers by U.S. Supreme Court Decision Giving Total Liability Shield to Big Pharma"
Commenter Name
janet miller
Posted: 2/25/2011 9:00:30 AM
I'm all for personal responsibility so if this is the deal then make it MY CHOICE wheter or not to get vaccines in the first place.
Commenter Name
Anita Knupp
Posted: 2/25/2011 9:04:29 AM
Speaker Beohner is asking for question for an interview coming up this Tues. You can post your questions on UTube. I think we all need to go there and post questins about bringing Big Pharma to heel. Here is the link. http://www.speaker.gov/Blog/?postid=226096
Commenter Name
Mark Richards
Posted: 2/25/2011 9:05:42 AM
"If we had known this day would come, we would have vigorously opposed any federal legislation that limited civil liability for drug corporations now making substantial profits from vaccines mandated by government.” Only neophytes believe that the US government is working for and answerable to the general public. Given its structure and funding it has proven itself an extension of the corporations which are now in almost full control. Perhaps at one time, long before my own, government responded to the people. Now, like a corporation, its motivation is cashflow and power. The public deserves a government that listens and serves to protect them over the rights of the more powerful. Instead we have a government that stands at attention, salutes, and decrees when the corporation demands. Sadly NVIC has apparently failed to see this evident for the past 60 years and that there is little chance it will change. Perhaps now they will get it, although I believe the opportunity for change has long since expired.
Commenter Name
Melyssa
Posted: 2/25/2011 9:21:37 AM
Is it possible for Hannah's family to sue in criminal court? It should be illegal to choose to create or use a less-safe drug than a safer one. This is the biggest issue with the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries -- they are out to make a profit first, and help people second. Doesn't a company like Pfizer have a responsibility to produce a safer drug? Is it not a criminal act to knowingly produce a dangerous drug when you could produce something less dangerous? When one path is blocked, another can be taken. The whole medicine-for-profit problem is really one of ethics, and perhaps that debate belongs in criminal court anyway.
Commenter Name
jackie
Posted: 2/25/2011 9:24:14 AM
Isn't it interesting that in San Francisco they are pushing to make circumcision illegal because it's "mutilating baby boys' bodies" and each male should have the right to decide for himself when he's older; yet we are required to administer vaccines to children which can cause brain injuries and more to them. Where is their choice in that?
Commenter Name
Gale
Posted: 2/25/2011 10:14:40 AM
I believe this is further evidence that the Supreme Court as well as most of our government agencies are being payed off my big business and especially big pharma. Unfortunately our children are the victims, as are all of us. The health (disease)care system known as allopathic medicine has currently surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in this country. As a recent article in USA Today reminded us the numbers of people dying at the hands of the medical establishment is the equivalent of a jumbo jetliner crashing everyday and all people on board are killed. Who would fly if that were happening? Yet our government continues to protect this failed system.
Commenter Name
Susan Pearce
Posted: 2/25/2011 11:47:36 AM
Thank you, NVIC, for all you are doing. There is a great explanation of this Supreme Court case's influence on what people can now do and not do when they are vaccine-damaged. The article title is Bruesewitz v. Wyeth: What it means for those who suffered a vaccine injury. It was written by Law Offices of Sadaka Associates, LLC. It is found at this web address: <http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=9579118f7ee07d75a2b2f5fea&id=619fa14f59&e=6f9bd590ea> The subtitles in the article give you an idea what the article tells you. They are: What was available to people who suffered vaccine injuries before Bruesewitz, What is available after Bruesewitz, What about failure to warn and/or manufacturing defects?, and What can we do now? Please read that article. -Susan Pearce
Commenter Name
Leya
Posted: 2/25/2011 1:57:36 PM
When people are FORCED to accept vaccinations, the pharmaceuticals and the government MUST be held liable for injuries. It is a dictatorship mentality that forces but won't take responsibility.
Commenter Name
Emily
Posted: 2/25/2011 3:13:21 PM
This is infuriating.
Commenter Name
Tama
Posted: 2/25/2011 3:57:11 PM
Sadly, ours is no longer a great country. This, and so many other atrocities from our own government that maliciously violate the freedoms that this once great nation stood for. Now we're a population run by and for corrupt corporations. I'm devastated to know my children will not know freedom.
Commenter Name
Tracy Steinbach
Posted: 2/25/2011 5:05:01 PM
Now that the Supreme Court has completely gutted the NVICP, it's time for Congress to overhaul this program. If the program has billions of dollars sitting in it, why aren't we being compensated for our children's injuries? Instead, the scheme that Congress is supporting is that Medicaid and the public schools are footing the bills, not to mention the families, but not the NVICP or the drug companies. So, again, why do have a NVICP that doesn't do what it was intended to do (make it easier for the families to get compensated)? It's because Congress has been thwarted on all sides, and for what? It seems like there is probably ample funding in the NVICP to compensate all of the vaccine injured. If there isn't then, the formual for funding needs to be overhauled. My children were shut out from the beginning because they didn't have "table" injuries, so proving causation meant that a doctor had to say that it was so. Well, no one would do that for us, so no NVICP compensation for us. Subsequent actions to try and sue the Thimerosal manufacturers were thwarted by the Bush administration, and here we still sit uncompensated and devestated financially. It's just so unfair and Congress needs to address this immediately.
Commenter Name
Greg
Posted: 2/25/2011 11:24:22 PM
America-land of the free I don't think so. What next? jail for parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated? Don't laugh! The Medical Pseudo-science will stop at nothing for more power & control. DR Robert Mendelsohn was correct. The greatest threat to our health is mpodern medicine. Doctors are only the sales assistants of the drug companies anyway.
Commenter Name
pook
Posted: 2/26/2011 4:31:55 AM
Medical terrorism is the stuff of facist dreams. But I take marginal issue with the statement that litigation is a 'safety net'. Really? How about not taking that risk for your child, who has no choice but the one you as a parent make? And that statement by the conventional doctors. It makes me feel like vomiting. Let them inject themselves, and leave our children alone.
Commenter Name
Stan
Posted: 2/26/2011 11:44:12 AM
This is so absolutely, so infuriatingly, outrageous and unfair. I had understood, like the NVIC/Barbara Loe Fisher, that if parents could not get justice in the federal Vaccine Court, they could at least, after having jumped through that hoop, have their day in court in their state in a product liability lawsuit. And according to this PR of the NVIC, that is indeed the law, or that is to say, the intention of the law. That means that the Supreme Court has just rewritten a law of Congress, and decided, in all its august majesty, that "I am the law". The American people in their outraged millions need to tell their representatives in Congress to tell the Supreme Court that they will make the laws, thank you very much, and the Supreme Court can just confine itself to interpreting laws in relationship to their constitutionality or not - not to straying over the constitutional line into making them. Justice denied is injustice. Parents: Refuse for yourself and for your children to take part in an unsafe medical procedure until you are provided with a recourse to justice in the event of damage. It's time for a massive civil disobedience campaign. And tell your members of Congress that either they take back their power to make the laws of the country, or they are out of a job; that you're mad as hell, and you're not going to take it anymore.
Commenter Name
monica
Posted: 2/26/2011 2:44:31 PM
How dare the CULPRITS COMMIT A CRIME AND not HAVE THE NERVE to pay for it?????!!!!!! Just as we pay our speeding tickets on the roads --if some of us make such mistakes once in a decade perhaps---so should all the Big Pharma, and other Culprits as Vaccine Manufacturers, should pay their FINES, TOO. TELL IT LIKE THIS TO THAT JUDGE WHO EATS TOO WELL FROM THE CORRUPTION PIE LOOKS TO ME!!!! IT should NOT BE ALLOWED...or if it has been allowed, then THERE NO LONGER EXISTS A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY HERE---IN THE USA!!!!!!!!!!! WE, THE PEOPLE, CAN ELECT, BUT, WE SHOULD TAKE OUR POWER BACK AND DE-ELECT SOME OF THE ONES WE HAVE ELECTED IF THEY DO NOT serve the best interest of our populatioN!!!!!! PERIOD! I believe that the Amrican population is asleep to let crimes like these not be punished....! I believe that the greatest bulk of our American Population is a chicken to not fight for our children's future: the trick is this: WE ARE THE PEOPLE AND THUS WE HAVE THE POWER, NOT OTHER ENTITIES AS WE HAVE ALLOWED THEM TO HOLD POWER FOR SO MANY DECADES.
Commenter Name
Karalane
Posted: 3/8/2011 10:36:34 AM
It normally takes about 10 years for a drug to be approved by the FDA for use on humans or animals. That's from start to finish: the applications and the studies conducted. This appears to be reasonable. However, when it comes to our children, different or more stringent testing needs to be done because children certainly are different physiogically from an adult. When serious side effects develop, the FDA usually pulls that drug off the shelf. For serious side effects to be noticed, approx. 10,000 people would have received the vaccination. Nothing, however, excuses the fact that these children have suffered and will continue to suffer from the affects of these drugs. Compensation for medical care seems to be the appropriate action to take. Nothing can take away the emotional turmoil and stress left behind but this should not be ignored. I am all for the pharmaceutical companies who are striving to manufacture drugs for diseases etc.. They also have a positive impact on the US economy. With this positive, one would think they would continue to do the right thing and provide the compensation necessary to care for the children whom their drugs have affected negatively.
Commenter Name
Er
Posted: 3/15/2011 12:10:20 PM
It is all about greed and power. The government, fda, "big pharma", insurance companies, doctors (NOT Naturopathic nor those committed to TRUE health)... KNOW that there is far less money for them in people achieving and maintaining HEALTH. So they haven't any desire to allow us to make choices that don't put money into their "trillions of dollars a year" industry. They are committing murder by injecting children with vaccines that are nothing but toxins. And the fact that they are NOT being held liable for injuring and killing our children is absolutely CRIMINAL. I am nauseated by the lack of morals and lack of concern for the future well-being of our children. It's all about how much money and power these people can accrue. But they are doing so at the cost of our lives! Pray and stay strong. BE WELL!

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