"AMERICANS LIKELY TO BECOME HUMAN GUINEA PIGS"

Read the whole article from the Center for Justice and Democracy website.

"THE DRUG INDUSTRY ALREADY BENEFITS FROM LIABILITY PROTECTION FOR PRODUCTION OF SEASONAL FLU VACCINES AND OTHER CHILDHOOD VACCINES

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (enacted under the Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986) provides drug manufacturers protection from lawsuits arising out of injuries caused by vaccination, forcing injured victims into an administrative compensation program8 The Program covers the major childhood vaccines as well as the seasonal flu vaccine (this was added in 2004).9

* As of 2001, 75 percent of claims were denied.10
* Many of these claims are denied after long and contentious legal battles taking an average of 7 years to be resolved.11
* Attorneys are less likely to take on vaccine injury cases due to these bureaucratic and political hurdles.12
* The Fund is designed so that the Department of Health and Human Services may unilaterally tighten the restrictions on claimants. In 1995, DHHS changed the burdens of proof so drastically that claims went from being paid in one out of three cases to one out of seven.13"

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"8 42 USC § 300 aa-1, table can be found on-line at http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/vicp/table.htm

9 Fact Sheet, Flu Vaccine Crisis: The Role of Liability Concerns, Office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, October 18, 2004.

10 Elizabeth C. Scott, 'The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act Turns Fifteen,' 56 Food Drug L.J. 351 (2001)

11Ibid.

12 24 J. Health Pol. Pol’y & L. 82.

13 Statement of the National Vaccine Information Center Co-Founder & President, Barbara Loe Fisher, September 28, 1999, House Oversight Hearing, 'Compensating Vaccine Injury: Are Reforms Needed?'"