OPINION:
President-elect Donald Trump, during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, said “there are problems” with vaccines that should be investigated — namely, that the rate of autism has skyrocketed in the past 30 years and both parents and his incoming administration want to know why.
You don’t have to dig too deep to see the potential scams at play among pharmaceuticals, politicians, federal heath bureaucrats and others with financial interest in the medical field.
Yes. Scam.
There’s a lot to be said for reevaluation of our nation’s childhood vaccine requirements.
There’s even more to be said for reevaluation of the ties between Big Pharma and the vaccine requirements and recommendations for children and adults alike.
It’s not conspiratorial to question why vaccines have seen a surge in recommendations and mandates at the very same time Congress passed a law letting pharmaceutical companies off the hook for punitive consequences for adverse health impacts from their vaccines.
Yes. Drug companies are protected from lawsuits that allege injury from vaccines. Did you know that?
From FindLaw in June of 2023: “When most drugs cause harm, pharmaceutical companies face product liability lawsuits. But that isn’t the case with vaccines. In 1986, Congress passed a law protecting vaccine manufacturers from civil personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from vaccine injuries.”
That law is called the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, or the Vaccine Act, and it came on the heels of millions of dollars of payouts from drugmakers to injured parties who sued over vaccine injuries in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Those who are harmed by vaccines can still sue and receive compensation for their suffering. But it won’t be the drugmakers who pay. It’ll be the taxpayers.
Within the Vaccine Act was a section that created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system that is a court unto itself — that is to say it operates outside the normal judicial system in America.
Again, from FindLaw: “When Congress granted drug companies immunity in regular court with the Vaccine Act, it established the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The no-fault compensation program is its own ‘court’ created to compensate those who claim to have suffered vaccine side effects caused by vaccines. … Because the program is not fault-based, people claiming vaccine injuries do not have to prove that the vaccine caused the damage. Instead, they only have to show that the injury occurred within a certain time period, depending on the vaccine, after vaccine administration.”
It’s administered by various federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services — which reviews claims from petitioners and pays out the amounts ordered by the so-called “court” — and also by the Department of Justice, which serves to defend HHS against plaintiffs; and by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the body established in 1982 to hear monetary claims against the federal government.
Since the late 1980s, the VICP has paid out more than $4 billion to plaintiffs alleging damages from vaccines, according to records from the Health Resources & Services Administration.
Thanks be the taxpayers for picking up the tab!
Monetary awards to the vaccine injured come from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund — which is “funded by a $.75 excise tax on vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for routine administration to children. The excise tax is imposed on each dose … of a vaccine,” HSRA wrote.
Seventy-five cents per dose — multiplied by dozens of doses per child — multiplied by millions upon millions of children in the United States. Cha-ching. The trust fund is safely funded. Should resources go low, all that would have to happen in order to replenish funding is to require another childhood vaccine. Or raise the tax. Or both.
And interestingly enough, it’s the CDC director who ultimately makes recommendations for childhood vaccines, based on findings from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
The federal health bureaucrats have been very busy recommending vaccines since the passage of the Gift to Big Pharma Act, er, oops, the Vaccine Act.
From the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia webpage: “Since the mid-1980s, many vaccines have been added to the schedule. The result is that the vaccine schedule has become more complicated than it once was, and children are receiving far more shots than before. … Now, children could receive as many as 27 shots by 2 years of age and put to six shots in a single visit.”
Meanwhile, the CDC now estimates about 1 in 36 children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder — and that’s up from 1 in 150 in 2000 — and that’s up massively from three decades ago.
“If you look at autism,” Trump said, The Hill reported, “30 years ago we had — I heard — numbers like 1 in 200,000 [or] 1 in 100,000. Now I’m hearing numbers like 1 in 100. So something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.”
Guaranteed: Let the drugmakers be held financially accountable for the safety of their vaccines, and the number of adverse health impacts from vaccines will dramatically fall. The number of government-backed and Big Pharma-pushed vaccines for children will dramatically fall. The number of pharmaceutical-slash-political mandates for so-called emergency vaccines for American citizens of all ages will dramatically disappear.
Accountability is a powerful thing.
Team Trump must take a look at the curious and profitable ties and scams between the pharmaceuticals and the politicians and reel in their influences. A quick and appropriate way to do that would be to make Big Pharma dip into its own pockets and shell out financial damages for the vaccine-injured. Taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for pharmaceuticals’ mistakes and overzealous politicians’ decisions.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on X @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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