A
ruling by the highest court of the European Union has the pharmaceutical
industry up in arms over being held financially accountable in European
civil courts for injuries and deaths caused by their vaccine products
The
European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that plaintiffs bringing vaccine
injury lawsuits against drug companies do not have to prove causation
but, rather, can provide clinical and circumstantial evidence to
demonstrate that a vaccine more likely than not caused a person’s injury
or death, prompting a barrage of criticism from the vaccine industry
The
EU ruling will allow for important pertinent evidence to be considered
in vaccine injury cases to determine whether or not the evidence
demonstrates that a vaccine was the most plausible explanation for an
individual’s health deterioration or death following vaccination
By Dr. Mercola
Many people are unaware that in 1986 Congress gave the U.S. vaccine
industry a shield from product liability that is unlike any other in
existence. In most cases, if a pharmaceutical product injures or kills a
person, the manufacturer of that product can be held financially
accountable in a civil court of law. With vaccines, however, this is not
the case.
In the U.S., there is a federally operated vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) that Congress created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
The VICP was created 30 years ago as an administrative alternative to
a lawsuit when federally licensed vaccines recommended for children
cause injury or death. Federal compensation was supposed to be awarded
when there was no other biologically plausible explanation for the
vaccine-related injury or death, and plaintiffs denied federal
compensation or offered too little were supposed to be able to access
civil courts.
However, in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ruled that
federally licensed vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe" and completely
removed liability from the vaccine industry — even if it could be proven
that a manufacturer had the ability to make the vaccine less reactive.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington handles vaccine injury
and death cases contested by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services and Department of Justice in what has become known as "vaccine
court." The federal VICP compensates vaccine victims through a federal
trust fund that collects a surcharge on every dose of vaccine purchased
and administered, which means that vaccine manufacturers pay nothing
into the vaccine injury trust fund even though they have no product
liability.
To add insult to injury, government agencies and the U.S. Court of
Claims deny federal compensation to the majority of vaccine-injured
plaintiffs. As noted by the National Vaccine Information Center's
Barbara Loe Fisher at the Revolution for Truth Rally earlier this year:
"The $3.6 billion in federal vaccine injury compensation that has
been awarded to more than 5,000 vaccine victims since 1988 doesn't
begin to pay for the damage done; not when two out of three claims are
denied."
A recent ruling by the highest court of the European Union, however,
could change the vaccine injury compensation landscape — in Europe, at
least — and the ruling has the vaccine industry up in arms over
potentially being held financially accountable in European civil courts
for illnesses and injuries caused by government recommended and mandated
vaccines.
EU Court Rules Circumstantial Evidence Should Be Considered in Vaccine Injury Cases
In many vaccine injury cases, it can be difficult if not impossible
to prove cause and effect and directly link a related injury with the
vaccine, in part because such injuries may occur days, weeks or months
later and also because the quality and quantity of vaccine safety
studies is extremely poor. Vaccine companies and government health
agencies have refused to conduct methodologically sound research into
how and why vaccines cause harm and who is biologically at greater risk
for being harmed.
In 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), recently renamed Health and
Medicine Division of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), appointed a
physician committee to review over 1,000 vaccine studies on eight
vaccines routinely administered to children. For more than 100 adverse
health outcomes reported following vaccination, IOM was unable to
determine whether or not the vaccines caused a commonly reported brain
or immune system disorder.1
In short, the quality and quantity of the scientific evidence related
to a wide range of brain and immune system disorders was insufficient
to make a conclusion about whether or not a vaccine causes those
disorders in a previously healthy person or a person biologically
susceptible to vaccine harm.
So the IOM committee was unable to confirm or deny causation for most reported poor health outcomes, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, learning disabilities and autism,
following receipt of certain vaccines. This does not exonerate vaccines
as being safe, but rather highlights the challenges faced when a person
attempts to prove a causative link between a vaccine they've received
and a related illness or injury.
It makes common sense that the circumstances surrounding a
vaccine-related illness — such as how soon reaction symptoms began
following vaccine administration, or whether the person had suffered a
previous vaccine reaction or was sick at the time of vaccination and so
on — would be essential pieces of evidence to consider in determining
probable cause. However, few civil courts have taken this kind of
clinical and circumstantial evidence seriously in vaccine injury
lawsuits.
This was the case with a man living in France, whose vaccine injury
case is still ongoing. The man developed multiple sclerosis after
receiving three doses of hepatitis B vaccine,
and he and his family believe the debilitating chronic disease was
caused by the vaccination. Much of the case was based on circumstantial
evidence including the timing of the onset of disease in relation to
vaccination.
A lower French court ruled that the hepatitis B vaccination was the
probable cause of the man's multiple sclerosis, but that lower court
decision was subsequently overturned because of a lack of scientific
consensus that hepatitis B vaccine causes multiple sclerosis.
Eventually, the courts needed to decide what types of evidence were
admissible in the case, which brought it before the European Court of
Justice (ECJ), the highest court of the Court of Justice of the European
Union (CJEU).2
EU Court Ruling May Hold More Vaccine Makers Accountable
The ECJ ruled that "serious, specific and consistent" circumstantial
evidence may be considered in vaccine injury cases, prompting a barrage
of criticism from the pharmaceutical industry, doctors, public health
officials and the media that it would "open the floodgates" for
frivolous vaccine injury lawsuits. In Nature magazine, however, Alex
Stein, a law expert at the Brooklyn Law School in New York says this is
not the case:3
"The court emphasized that liability claims for vaccine harm must
be considered on a case-by-case basis. It also ruled that the burden of
proof remained on plaintiffs (the man's family, in this case) and that
courts must consider relevant evidence from medical research.
These caveats are important, says … Stein … 'Under this
framework, credible medical evidence showing that the vaccine is safe
will win the case,' he says. 'Those who say that the ECJ decision has
opened a floodgate for multiple vaccine liability suits are therefore
mistaken.'"
Stein continued that the ruling may, in fact, allow for justice to be
fairly served, noting, "If courts were to use scientific methods of
proof in all cases in which they must determine disputed facts, they
would hardly be able to make decisions and to deliver timely justice to
people. Justice is generally best served when courts are free to admit
whatever relevant evidence they wish and judge it on its own merits
along with the rest."4
Indeed, the EU ruling will allow for important and pertinent evidence
to be considered in vaccine injury cases to conclude "the administering
of the vaccine is the most plausible explanation," including the
following:5
• The time between a vaccine's administration and the onset of a disease • An individual's previous state of health • A lack of any family history of the disease • A significant number of reported cases of the disease occurring following vaccination
Flu Vaccine Falsely Advertised as Good Match Completely Useless for Seniors
It's incredibly important for vaccine makers to be held accountable
for dangerous or ineffective products in civil court. As we continue to
see, there are more questions than answers when it comes to vaccine
safety and repercussions to human immunity and overall health. The case
of federally recommended annual flu shots is one such example in which
reactive and often ineffective vaccines continue to be foisted on a
vulnerable population, in this case the elderly.
As recently as February 2017, U.S health officials boasted that this
season's influenza vaccine was a "good match," even though the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) described the vaccine
as having a 48 percent effectiveness rate, which means the vaccine was
effective in preventing disease only 48 percent of the time.
For the past decade, the seasonal influenza vaccine's effectiveness has been only 50 percent to 60 percent effective.6
The news that this year's influenza vaccine was a "good match" probably
prompted more seniors to get one of the 145 million doses of flu
vaccine shipped to doctors' offices and public health clinics.7
By June 2017, however, the CDC's tune had changed. The vaccine
actually did a poor job of protecting the elderly, with a low 42 percent
effectiveness rate overall in preventing illness severe enough to cause
someone to visit a doctor. Meanwhile, among the 65 and over crowd — who
are at higher risk for influenza complications — as well as those aged
18 to 49, the flu shot "had no clear effect."8 In other words, it was useless.
Every vaccine carries a risk of injury or death that can be greater for some people, and the potential risk of suffering flu vaccine complications that result in a permanent disability such as paralysis from Guillain-Barre Syndrome
(GBS) is a risk you need to take into account each time you get a flu
shot. While death and complete disability from influenza vaccine
complications may be rare, severe complications and death from seasonal
influenza itself are also relatively rare, especially for individuals
with healthy immune systems.
So it is wise to weigh the risk of suffering a debilitating side
effect from a flu shot relative to the more likely potential of spending
a week in bed recovering from a bout with influenza. Most of the deaths
attributed to influenza are actually due to complications leading to
bacterial pneumonia and, unlike in past centuries, bacterial pneumonia
today can be effectively treated with advanced medical care.
More Polio Spread by Vaccine
Another issue often disregarded in discussions of vaccine safety is
the spread of vaccine-strain virus infections, including polio. Wild
type polio was declared eradicated in the US in 1979 and in the western
hemisphere in 1994.9
But despite widespread annual polio vaccine campaigns targeting
children in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the wild type poliovirus
is still circulating.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative slated 2018 as the year polio
would be eradicated from the Earth, but the virus is proving to be
harder to outwit than officials would have you believe. Not only are
strains of wild poliovirus still circulating in the world, but mutated
vaccine-strain polio viruses also circulate. A large part of the problem
is the polio vaccine itself, specifically the live oral polio vaccine (OPV).
In 2017, there have been 21 reported cases of vaccine-derived polio,
compared to six cases of wild polio — marking the first time more cases
of polio have been caused by vaccine-derived strains than wild or
naturally occurring strains. In Syria alone, 15 children have been
paralyzed by vaccine-derived polio, according to the World Health
Organization (WHO).10
Research published in the journal Cell also revealed that the live
virus used in the oral polio vaccine can easily mutate and spread
through a community.11 NPR reported:12
"After a child is vaccinated with live polio virus, the virus
replicates inside the child's intestine and eventually is excreted. In
places with poor sanitation, fecal matter can enter the drinking water
supply and the virus is able to start spreading from person to person.
'We discovered there's only a few [mutations] that have to happen
and they happen rather quickly in the first month or two
post-vaccination," [lead study author Raul] Andino says. 'As the virus
starts circulating in the community, it acquires further mutations that
make it basically indistinguishable from the wild-type virus. It's polio
in terms of virulence and in terms of how the virus spreads.'"
While news that the oral polio vaccine is causing vaccine-strain
polio cases may be surprising to you, it is not surprising at all to
WHO, whose director of polio eradication Michel Zaffran called the
vaccine-derived virus outbreaks an expected "hiccup." He told NPR:13
"We knew that we were going to have such outbreaks. We've had
them in the past. We continue to have them now. We know how to find
them, and we know how to interrupt them … So it's hiccup ... a very
regrettable hiccup for the poor children that have been paralyzed, of
course. But with regards to the whole initiative, you know it's not
something that is unexpected."
Into the Darkness: Most Medical Science Is Fake
Adding to the complexity surrounding the medical decisions you make
for yourself and your children is the fact that much scientific research
is manipulated or fraudulent. Former New England Journal of Medicine
editor-in-chief Dr. Marcia Angell has stated, "It is simply no longer
possible to believe much of the clinical researchthat is published."14
In the video above, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson
interviews Angell on the topic of "fake science." Angell says, "…
[P]hysicians and the public have come to believe that drugs are much
better and much safer than they really are."15
If you can't trust the scientific data, neither can your physician, but
most people make health care decisions based on their physician's
likely misguided advice.
In the case of vaccines, for example, many are not aware that the
U.S. childhood vaccination schedule is based on convenience, not on
safety. While your physician may tell you that giving your child multiple vaccines simultaneously
is safe, think about this logically. According to Neil Z. Miller, a
medical research journalist and director of the Thinktwice Global
Vaccine Institute:
"The CDC's immunization schedule requires that children receive
eight vaccines at 2 months of age, eight vaccines at 4 months of age and
eight vaccines at 6 months of age. I ask parents, 'When did you ever
take eight drugs at the same time?
… If you did take eight drugs at the same time, would you think
it was more likely that you would or would not have an adverse
reaction?' Because toxicologists know that the more drugs you take at
the same time, the more potential for some kind of a synergistic or
additive toxicity …
The CDC has put together a schedule based on convenience. They
say '[G]ive eight vaccines at 2 months, give eight more vaccines at 4
months and give eight more booster shots at 6 months' because it's
convenient. They're afraid that parents will not come to the
pediatrician again and again and again if they have to keep coming back
for more vaccines, so they get multiple [shots all at once].
They said, 'We're going to make this schedule based on
convenience.' Not based on evidence. Not based on science. There's
nothing scientific about the CDC's recommended immunization schedule."
It's therefore crucially important to consider multiple sources of
vaccine information and use reason, intuition and common sense when
making an educated decision about vaccination. Only when you have all
the facts, including those from unbiased, independent sources, and think
critically can you make a truly informed decision for yourself or your
child that will protect your health.
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