Debating Anti-Vaxxers: The Vaccine Court.

Factual Questions
1

A new hobby of mine, masochistic though it may be, is trying to slap some sense into anti-Vaxxers I run into both in real life and Facebook (where, somehow, I’ve become “Friends” with several of them). One claim doing the rounds at the moment is that, apparently, a special “Vaccine Court” has been set up to process vaccine injury related claims, and this court has paid millions to parents of kids bringing damages claims on the grounds that the MMR jab caused their child’s autism. My Google-fu is weak, and I’ve not been able to find out much. What I’m after are answers to the following questions:

1). Has the vaccine court ever paid out on a claim that the MMR jab causes autism. I’m after rulings which link MMR to autism specifically, not vaguer terms like “neurological disorders”.

2). If so, how many times has it done so?

3). Are there any sites which give a run-down of each of those cases.

I’m aware that the vaccine court dismissed several MMR-autism test cases but the meme doing the rounds at the moment is that since then the court has awarded an unspecified number of families with damages solely on the grounds that the MMR jab caused their autism. I’m also aware that a court ruling doesn’t prove anything scientifically. I just want to find out how much (if any) truth there is in the rumour. Cheers in advance!

2

The antivax meme is wrong - the vaccine court has never ruled that the MMR or any other vaccine caused autism.

There have been rare cases of compensation awarded due to neurologic impairment found to be probably related to a vaccine, but not autism.

In fact, the court has specifically ruled in three separate cases that vaccines did not cause autism.

"Working independently, three special masters acting as judges in the federal “vaccine court” issued separate but similar rulings that found no evidence that the vaccines had caused the children’s disorders…

The decisions are especially telling because the rules of the vaccine court did not require the plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty – all the families needed to show was a preponderance of the evidence, or “50 percent and a hair.” To the extent that these cases are representative of the claims made by some 4,800 other families seeking compensation, those cases would appear to be on shaky ground.

Ruling on a case brought by Theresa and Michael Cedillo of Yuma, Ariz., special master George L. Hastings used italicized words for emphasis and wrote that his extensive analysis of the evidence showed that the Cedillos’ vaccine-autism theory was “very wrong.”

“Unfortunately, the Cedillos have been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment,” Hastings wrote."

For details of how antivaxers attempt to twist vaccine court cases, check out Respectful Insolence, which has featured numerous articles on them (use the search function to find them).

3

“neurologic impairment” is pretty damn serious, whether or not it’s specifically autism.

So, the everyday standard for civil cases in the US.

4

Nobody (well, nobody credible) said that vaccines are not without risk. Practically all medications have side effects. This does not mean that they are not effective and it does not mean that they should not be used. Let’s not forget that vaccines are preventing severe, even fatal illnesses from affecting swaths of the population.

If those risks were not divulged, were covered up by the manufacturer, etc. then compensation is likely justified. This doesn’t mean vaccines are some horrible evil thing or that disparaging them as a group is a sensical response. If one court case awards damages, this doesn’t mean that we throw out all of the scientific studies – court cases don’t make great science, for one, and can always be overturned. And even if one vaccine is taken off the market, that doesn’t mean that all vaccines are bad.

Frankly, a lot of the anti-vax sentiment would be seen as ridiculous if people had any real concept of the diseases they are fighting. In that way, perhaps they work “too” well.

5

Maybe we should institute a “Hunger Games”-style demonstration every year. 12 kids are released into an arena and compete in some way. The winner gets vaccinated, and then they’re all infected with smallpox or polio.

6

Maybe you have to be my age (76) to appreciate just how much vaccination has changed lives. Kids died of measles. Or suffered serious enchephalopathy, which happened to a son of my favorite professor (and his wife was a pediatrician). By my time, there was a whooping cough vaccine, but before that kids died of that. People of all ages died from tetanus. And need I mention polio?

So yes, some kids suffer adverse reactions to vaccinations and some even die, I imagine. I have no objection to indemnifying victims. But there are far fewer victims than there were of the diseases. And the connection to autism has been so thoroughly refuted that is now just insane (not a word I use lightly).

My doctor calls refusal of vaccination a form of child abuse.

7

I wrote this guest post for Red Wine And Applesauce regarding the NVICP back in March:

Parents are bombarded with misleading information from anti-vaccine advocates. One piece of information that those advocates like to exploit is the existence of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). Anti-vaccine advocates use the fact that this program exists, and that it has paid out over 3,000 claims since its creation, to “prove” that vaccines are dangerous.

Let’s talk numbers.

The NVICP was created in 1988. The reasons for its creation are complex, and a topic for another post.

Since then, as of March 4, 2013, 14,548 petitions have been filed under the program, 12,566 have been adjudicated by the program, 3,256 have been compensated and 9,946 have been dismissed with no compensation. The last two numbers don’t equal the adjudication numbers because sometimes claims are settled with an agreement between parties and not by the court.

There are an estimated 4 million children born (pdf) in the U.S. every year. Therefore, if you start at 1989 (the year after the NVICP was created, since it was created in October of 1988), there have been approximately 92 million children born in America since the creation of the NVICP.

Average vaccination coverage in America hovers around 95%, with some areas being higher, some being lower, and coverage rates varying for various childhood vaccines. Therefore, since the NVICP was created, approximately 87.4 million children have been vaccinated at least partially, if not completely, according to the CDC recommendations.

The percentage of petitions to actual vaccines administered is therefore 0.016%. One one-hundredth of one percent of cases of vaccination have resulted in a petition being filed.

The percentage of compensations to actual vaccines administered is 0.003%. Three one-THOUSANDTHS of one percent of cases of vaccination have resulted in compensation for injury.

I don’t know about you, but a safety rating of 99.997% seems really great to me!

Additionally, the NVICP claims are not limited to children, and the above calculations are by person, not by injection, so the actual safety rate is significantly higher than 99.997%. If you included all adult vaccinations, and counted number of injections rather than number of vaccinated persons, you’d get something that probably looks like 99.9999999999999999% of child and adult vaccinations resulting in no serious adverse events.

Let’s put those safety statistics into perspective.

Your odds of dying in a car accident (pdf) are 1 in 98, or 1.02%, or 340 times greater than experiencing an adverse event from a vaccine.

The number of unintentional injuries in America in 2009 was 38,900,000 (pdf). The population in America in 2009 was approximately 307 million. If every one of the unintentional injuries in America was to a different person (and not multiple injuries to individuals), that means that 12.67% of the population was injured by accident in 2009.

Even if we control for multiple injuries, the chances of being injured in general (car accident, work accident, accident in the home, etc.) are thousands of times greater than developing a compensable adverse vaccine reaction (one that the NVICP will pay compensation for).

Bottom line – vaccines are safe, and save lives. Don’t let the misuse of the NVICP data scare you from making the easiest decision you can make as a parent – vaccinate your children, unless there is a legitimate medical reason not to do so.

8

I agree with everything you say Kolga and it makes a compelling argument. The problem is that these are the same type of people who view the lottery as an investment. A safety rate of 99.997% means nothing to them.

9

Believe me, I know that. I was just responding to the requests from people who wanted information regarding the NVICP numbers.

10

I agree.

I have always been of the opinion that the first day of school line up all the kid and have the nurses shot them up with vaccinations, just like it happened in the late 60s for my brother and I. If they pull the kids out of line, they get slapped with an indelible ink marking and are then not able to go into any area with other children, no playgrounds, no McDonalds, no My Little Ponies concerts, nothing. They are not contributing to a herd effect and are therefor a danger.

if the parents want to abuse their own kids, they should not be allowed to abuse any other children who may be immune compromised or otherwise unable to be vaccinated through no fault of their own. [it must suck to be allergic to vaccinations]

11

Ok if public schools want to require vaccinations for kids. But child abuse? Seriously? :dubious:

Cars are freakin’ dangerous. Being substantially less dangerous than cars doesn’t equate to safety.

12

I was looking for similar information recently in an attempt to convince an LVN that vaccines do not cause autism. She and I both know somebody who had a child who was injured by a DPT vaccine, and who was awarded $850,000 in compensation by the NVICP. The LVN took that as prima facie evidence that vaccines can precipitate autism. I tried to find a complete breakdown of all NVICP awards, or at least a representative cross-set of awards, but couldn’t find any. What I was able to determine is that the bulk of these cases involve either anaphylaxis or febrile seizures. There are about 35 such cases every year in the United States. This is why there’s a 75 cent tax on every vaccine administered in the U.S. It is freely acknowledged that these isolated instances do occur, but that they are a necessary evil. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—or the one. In order to protect the vaccine manufacturers from crippling litigation, a system was designed to compensate those few unfortunate individuals who are harmed by a process that is otherwise indispensable to the public good.

13

Not only is it child abuse, it is reckless endangerment of society in general. I’ve said it a million times before, and I’ll say it a million times again—Wakefield should be in prison being ass-fucked by an 800-pound gorilla, not free to gallivant around the globe promulgating his particular brand of rationalization of his criminal acts. But that’s all I’ll say on the subject unless somebody wants to take it to GD.

14

You do know that Wakefield got struck off over here. His theory was discredited and he was found to have falsified his findings to support his ideas.

15

This should be a sticky.

16

…is much lower than the standard for establishing cause and effect on a scientific basis.

And if you want to sink way lower than the standard for the U.S. vaccine court, there’s the Italian court that ruled there was a link between a vaccine and a plaintiff’s autism (antivaxers seem less eager to cite this case, perhaps aware of the odor Italian courts are associated with after travesties like the “cellphones cause cancer” ruling and the Amanda Knox case).

17

Don’t forget the “seismologists cause earthquakes” case.

18

I sympathize. That’s like saying she knows someone who nearly died from eating peanuts, therefore peanuts can precipitate autism.

19

Yeah, good analogy. The woman’s daughter (we’ll call her “Lorena”) had a series of massive febrile seizures about four hours after receiving a DPT vaccine, which resulted in permanent brain damage. She was handsomely compensated. The daughter lingered for 15 years, finally passing away about four years ago. Now the woman (we’ll call her “VaxMom”) is using the remaining money to fly around the country and speak at anti-vax rallies about her experience. She even has a picture of herself on her blog with her arm around Andrew Wakefield. It’s enough to make you want to puke. When I pointed out to my LVN friend that VaxMom doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, she responded “well, there must be some truth to it—look what happened to Lorena!” Sometimes I just wanna beat my head against a wall.

20

Or Never go to the doctor…they find things wrong with you.