RFK Jr. vows to 'fix' the 'broken' federal vaccine court

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program created a special court for vaccine-related injuries. Kennedy has called it “broken” and vows to “fix it.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has promised not to “take away anybody’s vaccines.”

Beyond restricting who is eligible for certain shots — as he’s already done for this year’s Covid vaccines — experts say Kennedy can take steps that could drive drug companies to stop making vaccines entirely.

In the 1980s, lawsuits fueled by the nascent anti-vaccine movement led more than a dozen manufacturers to stop producing vaccines, creating shortages, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Domestic vaccine production survived only because Congress stepped in to create a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP, which protected vaccine makers from liability and created a special vaccine court to award financial damages to people harmed by vaccines, said Dr. Walter Orenstein, an infectious disease expert and emeritus professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine.

The program’s legal protections for plaintiffs and drugmakers have helped ensure the United States has a reliable supply of vaccines ever since, Orenstein said.