National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Beats me. Sorry, just kidding. I’m just a little bleary from looking at the web sites about the definition of “design defect” related to vaccines as it applies to the Iowa bill to make vaccine manufacturers waive their immunity from lawsuits about vaccine related injuries.

I am sympathetic to anyone who in fact has suffered a vaccine related injury.

That term “design defect” has been bugging me for days now and I just found out that this has been the subject of states vs federal legal wrangling for years. I’m not up to explaining all the legalese but there is a really tangled trail of cases in Georgia and Pennsylvania roughly around 15 years ago that ultimately led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision saying, essentially, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the federal Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of the 1980s preempts all state level vaccine design defect claims.

I think that explains why the Iowa bill says that vaccine manufacturers have to waive their immunity from suits if they want Iowans to get their vaccines.

I can hear the groans and shouts of dissent even as I write this. Hey, you can’t make this up. Talk to your legislator or lawyer about it.

I’m not sure why Iowa would want to repeat the grind that Georgia and Pennsylvania went through which led to the conclusion that you can file vaccine design defect claims at the state level and not have to repeat history which would likely lead to any decisions made there being reversed in federal court.

And I’m not sure why any vaccine manufacturer would want to fight that battle in Iowa either. They might just steer around us and take their vaccines elsewhere.

The beginning of the Georgia story.

The end of the Georgia story.

The beginning and the end of the Pennsylvania story.

Vaccines aren’t perfect. They are neither 100% safe nor 100% effective. However, I support having vaccines available to help keep us healthy and the right to choose getting a vaccine. That’s why I don’t support a bill that I believe would make them less accessible.

This is a follow up to yesterday’s post about the Iowa legislature’s proposition of a new law that would essentially ban mRNA vaccines in Iowa. I don’t understand the numbers and codes on the new sections, but the new one proposes that manufacturers of vaccines would have to waive immunity from lawsuits arising from “a design defect of the vaccine.”

I’m not sure if that’s addition to being charged with a simple misdemeanor, subject to a $500 fine for administering the vaccine. I oppose this one too because I think it would essentially make vaccines difficult to access and harder to persuade new medical staff to come to Iowa.

There’s going to be a meeting about the bill at 4:30 PM CST. I can’t remember if it’s at the state house or at the Exile Brewing Co. for sandwiches and Ruthie’s beer.

In any case, the comment section is overwhelmingly in opposition to the bill. I saw several comments mentioning that we already have the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVIP), which is designed to field requests for compensation to those who believe they’ve been injured by certain vaccines. I had not heard of it before. It’s administered by the federal government, Health Resources & Services Administration, which is under the Health and Human Resources department.

There is a nice easy to read summary about the complicated story of vaccine safety and liability at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia website. It was reviewed by Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD last year. He attends meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although I think he missed the one last month about the flu vaccine because it was cancelled.

If I see anything earth shaking about the meeting this afternoon on HF712, I’ll make an addendum to this post.