The Vaccine Injury Court

Larry Law

​The vaccine injury court was established within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. This is where parents go for compensation when their child is injured by a vaccine. You actually sue the federal government and fight against a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer. Due process does not exist in this court. There is no jury. It is not a court of law. It is an administrative proceeding (like an IRS audit). There is only a court-appointed "special master" who is a government attorney that hears your grievance and decides if you have grounds to be compensated. Since 1989, these special masters have awarded nearly $4 billion to vaccine injured children and adults. 1200 claims have been for death and 18,000 for injury. The DTP vaccine is the most common vaccine filed against followed by MMR. Only 34% of claims are granted some type of compensation. In 2017, $282 million was awarded.

But very few parents with injured children win compensation. First of all, the government is judge, jury and executioner. In 1995, when the case load became excessive, they changed the rules for what constituted an injury. For example, prior to 1995, 25% of the files claimed against DTP shots causing injury were paid. After 1995, only 5.4% were paid. Second, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) used to track injuries only captures 1% of all cases. Most doctors and parents have no knowledge that the system exists. In addition, the statute of limitations is only 3 years for the court. An autism diagnosis may take until a child is 4 years old and then it is too late to file. The parents bear the entire burden of proving injury and the process can take many years from filing to award (51% of cases take longer than 5 years!). Can you imagine the financial and emotional burden on a family suddenly dealing with a severely disabled child who requires 24/7 care not covered by insurance?

J.B. Handley in his book, How to End the Autism Epidemic, stated, "The year the vaccine court began operating--1989--is important to the story, because that's also the birth year many point to as the beginning of a meteoric rise in the number of children with autism. Three other potentially monumental things happened in 1989: the hepatitis B vaccine was licensed, the Hib vaccine was licensed, and, for the first time, a second dose of the MMR vaccine was recommended for all American children.
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When the vaccine court was established in 1986, there were only three vaccines given in the United States--DTP, polio, and MMR--and vaccination rates hovered between 50 and 60 percent nationally. Today, there are eleven vaccines for children, given in multiple doses, with vaccination rates hovering around 90 percent nationally. There is an enormous difference between the market the vaccine court was created to "protect" and the market today. In raw numbers there are nearly four times as many vaccine doses given each year to children than there were in 1986, even though the US population has only grown by 0.3% in that same time period. Beginning in 1989, the US vaccine schedule quickly morphed from the one the vaccine court was created to support to a far larger schedule with more complexity. This isn't a coincidence, the vaccine court removed all liability from vaccine makers, greatly altering the risk/reward calculation in their favor."

For many years, the expert witness on the government's side in vaccine court was Dr. Andrew Zimmerman. He was the doctor called in to dispute parental claims that vaccines caused their child's autism. His written testimony helped deny the claims of families of more than 5,000 children with autism during an Omnibus Autism Proceeding in 2009 in vaccine court.

​In the 1990s a young doctor (Jon Poling)  joined Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. Kelley at the prestigious Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. The institute is a renowned research facility for autism. In 2000, Dr. Poling's 19-month old daughter, Hannah, experienced a massive regression into autism following her vaccination. Dr. Zimmerman, Dr. Kelley and his colleagues tried to figure out what happened. Dr. Poling stated that if he hadn't seen it himself, he would never have believed it.
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In time, Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. Kelley became convinced that vaccines were indeed capable of causing autism under certain circumstances. When Dr. Zimmerman's expert opinion began to change, the CDC and Department of Justice panicked. The government offered a quick $20 million settlement with the Polings in 2010. The Polings disappeared off the radar shortly after that--they were under a gag order as part of the deal to keep the money flowing. In fact, we would know nothing about this story if it weren't for one of the Polings' lawyers leaking it later. Stay tuned to hear more details about Hannah Poling, other children's similar cases, and the testimony of Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. Kelley. There is no question legally, that the government has acknowledged that vaccines can cause autism. The FDA and CDC just won't admit it publicly.

For more information, see my book, There's An Elephant in the Room-Exposing Hidden Truths in the Science of Health.