The news media are full of stories about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attack on vaccination programs. He has cancelled $500 million in funding for mRNA research, the kind that produced the Covid vaccine. He has put antivaxers in charge of important programs at the Centers for Disease Control, and fired the CDC leader when she refused to promise to accept their recommendations without regard to their scientific validity. His attack is a potential threat to the existence of childhood vaccines.
But the media somehow fail to tie his actions to his financial motives. Bluntly put, Kennedy wants to make money from suits against companies who manufacture vaccines. As Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out during his confirmation hearing, he has already been paid $2.5 million by a law firm for his help with their other lawsuits. And he had an agreement with that firm to receive 10% of any recoveries they receive in suits by people he refers who sue a vaccine maker.
When challenged, Kennedy did not terminate that contract. According to PolitiFact, he simply assigned the proceeds to his son, who works at that law firm.
Even if he were not HHS secretary, the deal stinks. He is a lawyer. Lawyers are not supposed to get referral fees unless they actually work on a case.
But he is HHS secretary. If he were a doctor, traditional medical ethics would prevent him from profiting from the sale of a drug he prescribed. In fact, he has criticized doctors who have been paid by insurance companies to administer vaccines, even though the payments come from insurers who believe they have a health benefit, not from the manufacturers. But he, or at least his family, stands to profit from the decisions he makes about what others prescribe.
Vaccines occupy a precarious place in the legal universe. They are not profit centers for drug companies. Patients usually get only one shot, and the price has to be kept low to encourage popular use. In the 1980s false claims that the Diptheria, Tetanus and Pertussis vaccine caused brain injury threatened to bankrupt its manufacturers. To prevent that, Congress passed the National Vaccine Compensation Injury Program.Vaccines are known to have harmful side effects in one or two cases for each million shots. Instead of eliminating claims altogether, the law created an alternative to court compensation. The government has a list of covered vaccines and the side effects they are known to cause. Claims go to a federal court special master who can award compensation for medical bills, attorneys fees, and up to $250,000 for pain and suffering. Manufacturers are taxed to fund the payments.
Even with that protection, the number of companies that will make vaccines is small. For example, only one or two make the HPV vaccine, even though it is covered.
So the train coming down the road is already whistling. Repeated studies – nine by the CDC since a 2013 study -- have found no evidence that vaccines cause autism. The principal author of the manual used to diagnose autism has said that the increase in the number of autism diagnoses can largely be explained by a change in the profession’s definition of the disease.
But Kennedy has gotten President Donald Trump to claim that vaccines cause autism and has replaced the members of the Advisory Committee for Childhood Vaccines responsible for deciding which side effects a vaccine is presumed to cause. If the committee members decide to put autism on the list of compensable side effects, the cash register of firms who sue vaccine makers has the potential to ring loudly.
And, according to a new article in the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, that would threaten the entire vaccine industry. The problem is that about one in every 200 children is diagnosed with some form of autism. Even if claims were limited to what is known as “profound” autism, they would be what the article calls a “tsunami.” Potential company liability could be $100 billion, more than the entire amount paid out by the National Vaccine Compensation Injury Program in its entire 40-year history.
That would present two problems for the manufacturers. If the program went bankrupt, it would no longer provide the kind of liability shield it now provides. And a declaration by the CDC that vaccines can cause autism would provide fuel for independent tort suits. In fact, the article points out that if all the CDC did was take down its current webpage statement that “vaccines do not cause autism,” courts might mistakenly take that as a green light to allow tort claims whose liability would not be limited by the federal statute.
The only sure way for companies to avoid those claims would be to stop making childhood vaccines.
When he was a student at Harvard, Secretary Kennedy had a reputation as a dealer in illegal drugs, including cocaine.
Just as in the past he was allegedly willing to make money peddling a substance that could wreck people’s lives, now he is selling the cocaine of misinformation about vaccines. Like his alleged sale of the illegal drug, his campaign against vaccines appears to be designed to feather his own nest at the cost of other people’s lives.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
