A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.
Another leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.
Abstract
Keywords: Vaccine, Autism, VICP, Vaccine Act, NVICP, Vaccine Compensation, Vaccine Injury, Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, measles, MMRV, Immunization, Vaccine Court, ASD
Secretary Kennedy and his colleagues at HHS/CDC may soon officially declare that one or more of the childhood vaccines cause autism. This article outlines the impact of such a sea-change on the docket, and then the very survival, of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) -- a federal "no fault" system which Secretary Kennedy has long opposed as a brake on state tort litigation.
Using CDC data (published before Secretary Kennedy's appointment), we show that the number of "profound" autism claims that could immediately be filed in the VICP would exceed the total number of all claims processed by the Program for all injuries from all vaccines over the Program's entire 40-year history. And that massive number of new claims will then bankrupt the Program.
Specifically, we show that the immediate docket of profound autism claims within the 3-year limitations period would likely command compensation awards totaling nearly $100 Billion, with awards thereafter running at about $30 Billion each year. Those awards would quickly consume the current $4 Billion balance in the VICP Trust Fund--a fund which, by federal law can only be replenished by an excise take that generates about $250 Million a year -- less than 1% of the amount needed to cover the projected annual autism awards.
We then assess the intractable problems with any effort to limit such claims or any other strategy to avoid the Fund's insolvency. We conclude with a discussion of how that insolvency would unleash the type of unrestrained state tort litigation (with risks running at a rate at least 5000 times greater than the risks from the injuries currently covered by the VICP) -- litigation which Congress properly concluded would compel the manufacturers to cease production, leaving the nation with no childhood vaccines at all.
Keywords: Vaccine, Autism, VICP, Vaccine Act, NVICP, Vaccine Compensation, Vaccine Injury, Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, measles, MMRV, Immunization, Vaccine Court, ASD
