WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--On the 30th Anniversary of the enactment of the National Childhood Injury Act and during the Seventh Annual Vaccine Awareness Week Nov. 13-20, 2016, the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is renewing its call for an end to the 1986 product liability shield Congress gave vaccine manufacturers for injuries and deaths caused by government licensed and mandated vaccines.
In the 1986 tort reform legislation that created a federal vaccine injury compensation program alternative to product liability and malpractice lawsuits, NVIC co-founders secured vaccine safety informing, recording and reporting provisions that have not been enforced. In 2011, the US Supreme Court banned design defect lawsuits when there was evidence a drug company could have made a vaccine less reactive. Between 2011 and 2016, medical trade associations and special interest groups funded by pharmaceutical companies and government have lobbied state legislatures to remove non-medical and severely restrict medical vaccine exemptions.
“Drug companies should be liable in civil court for vaccine injuries and deaths and so should anyone giving vaccines to people being denied the human right to informed consent to medical risk taking,” said NVIC co-founder and president Barbara Loe Fisher. “There is an urgent need to hold vaccine manufacturers and doctors accountable in civil court for the safety of vaccines and how they are being given.”
The federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) has paid $3.5 billion to victims of vaccine injury and death, but two out of three claims are denied. Today, most of the VICP awards go to adults injured by flu vaccine and not to children injured by vaccines required to attend school.
NVIC co-founder and vice president Kathi Williams said, “Thirty years ago Congress promised parents that vaccine injured children would be compensated fairly and generously. Not only has that promise been broken, there is an attack on vaccine freedom of choice because nobody is legally accountable for the safety of vaccines.”
During Vaccine Awareness Week, NVIC has added a video vaccine reaction reporting feature to the International Memorial for Vaccine Victims called Protect Life: Witness and Vaccine Reaction on NVIC.org. In response to proposals to eliminate the medical and religious vaccine exemptions, NVIC has also published a 90-page state legislative policy analysis, as well as posted Spanish translations of NVIC’s most popular vaccine information brochures on its website.
“I encourage everyone who has had an experience with a vaccine reaction to share it with others by posting a video on NVIC’s Memorial for Vaccine Victims,” said Dr. Joseph Mercola, a family practice physician and founder of the world’s largest natural health information website. “Making people aware that serious vaccine reactions are real and must be prevented can save lives.”
NVIC and Mercola.com co-sponsor Vaccine Awareness Week and have been working together since 2008 to educate the public about vaccination and health. NVIC is a founding member of the non-profit Health Liberty Coalition, which was launched in 2011 by Dr. Mercola to advocate for the public’s right to know and freedom to make voluntary decisions about vaccination, non-GMO food, mercury-free amalgams and fluoride-free water.
The National Vaccine Information Center is a charitable educational organization founded in 1982 to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and advocates for inclusion of informed consent protections in US vaccine policies and laws, including flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions. NVIC operates three vaccine information and advocacy websites: NVIC.org, TheVaccineReaction.org and NVICAdvocacy.org.
Mercola.com was founded by Dr. Joseph Mercola in 1997 to share the most up-to-date natural health information and resources with the public. The Mercola website currently receives over 30 million page views monthly and the online daily Mercola Newsletter has more than one million subscribers.
