Aug. 18 (UPI) -- For almost 40 years, people who suspect they've been harmed by a vaccine have been able to turn to a little-known system called the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program -- often simply called the vaccine court.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of the vaccine court, calling it "biased" against compensating people, slow and unfair. He has said that he wants to "revolutionize" or "fix" this system.
I'm a scholar of law, health and medicine. I investigated the history, politics and debates about the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in my book Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury.
Although vaccines are extensively tested and monitored, and are both overwhelmingly safe for the vast majority of people and extremely cost-effective, some people will experience a harmful reaction to a vaccine. The vaccine court establishes a way to figure out who those people are and to provide justice to them.
Having studied the vaccine court for 15 years, I agree that it could use some fixing. But changing it dramatically will be difficult and potentially damaging to public health.
