The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A failed experiment?

On November 18, the President of the National Vaccine Information Center made a presentation before the US Dept of Health Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines in which she argued that the no-fault approach created by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 has been a failure. In her presentation she argues that "[t]he law was passed by Congress at the specific request of pharmaceutical companies threatening to stop making vaccines without product liability protection, as well as organizations representing pediatricians reluctant to give childhood vaccines without liability protection" and that those fighting for the rights of vaccine consumers and the vaccine injured, agreed to work on the Act because of promises made by Congress that the proposed legislation would provide a fair, expedited, non-adversarial, less traumatic, less expensive no-fault compensation alternative to civil litigation. She concludes, however, that those goals have not been reached. The full text of her presentation is available here. Originally posted by William Childs on TortsProf Blog