Few Getting Help From Vaccine Fund

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" luckypig " <luckypig

Tue, 3 Jan 2006 20:43:13 -0500

Few Getting Help From Vaccine Fund;

Short Statute of Limitations Bars Many Claims

 

Few Getting Help From Vaccine Fund

By Valeri Williams / WFAA-TV

 

A record number of families this year have filed cases with the

nation's Vaccine Compensation Fund on behalf of children who've

suffered side effects from their immunizations.

 

More than a decade ago - with a broad spectrum of support from

doctors, lawyers, families and pharmaceutical companies - Congress

established the fund to help in the rare cases when there were vaccine

injuries.

 

The fund now contains nearly $2 billion - but the government is making

it extremely difficult for victims to collect.

 

Corbin Lane, 7, can't write his name or carry on a conversation.

However, he can recite from memory at least twenty different

children's books. His parents are convinced that Corbin's neurological

disorder was triggered by the mercury in his vaccines. Tests show -

like dozens of other American children diagnosed with autism symptoms

after being immunized - Corbin has a mercury level off the chart.

 

" He does this flexing 'stim', which looks like central nervous system

damage to me, " mother Donn Lane said. " But when he gets excited or

upset, he'll stim. And now we can say to him, 'What are you doing?'

And, he'll say, 'I'm stimming'.

 

" We actually looked back on our videotape - he was our first child so

we videotaped him like crazy. We saw it begin right around twenty

months - standing in front of the TV doing it. We thought he was just

excited. "

 

It was only last year that Corbin was diagnosed with Pervasive

Developmental Disorder, or PDD - a diagnostic cousin of autism. Yet,

his family is not eligible to apply for financial help from the

Vaccine Compensation Fund because of a three-year statute of limitations.

 

The catch is that the clock starts ticking from the first symptom of

injury - not the day of diagnosis. In Corbin's case, the video shows

he began having problems more than five years ago, although his

parents had no clue what was happening.

 

" I used to say 99 out of 100 parents who said their child had an

adverse reaction to a vaccine were time-barred, " attorney Jeff Sell said.

 

Houston attorney, Jeff Sell, has a personal stake in the fight to get

Congress to change the vaccine injury legislation. His son is autistic

with extremely high mercury levels.

 

" I'm time-barred, " Sell said. " By the time I sat down and looked at my

son's vaccine records, we were beyond three years and, there is an

iron clad rule: Three years from the manifestation of the injury -

that is an unforgiveable rule. "

 

The compensation fund is set up to help injuries from all vaccines.

However, within the past two years, thousands of families have come

forward claiming their autistic children were hurt by a mercury-based

preservative found in many vaccines called Thimerosal.

 

Medical opponents said those families have been stirred up by lawyers

looking to create a litigation bonanza in this country.

 

Ironically, this is exactly why the Vaccine Compensation Fund received

so much support - both from Democrats and Republicans - when it was

established in 1988. It was supposed to be a win-win situation for

families and pharmaceutical companies.

 

Initially, the Fund had three goals: To protect vaccine manufacturers

from lawsuits, to stabilize the nation's vaccine supply, and to

provide generous compensation to families without tying them up in

court for years.

 

Indiana Congressman Dan Burton was one of the bill's biggest

supporters, and said the fund is not working like it should.

 

" No, it isn't at all, " Burton said. " There's $1.7 billion in the fund

and, instead of it being one that does not require litigation, almost

every single person that we've talked to who has had children harmed

by vaccines has had to fight and fight and fight to get compensation

from them.

 

" In most cases, they don't get any compensation, and when they do,

sometimes it takes as much as ten years. "

 

For the past year, Burton's congressional committee on government

reform has held a series of hearings highlighting the problems of a

parade of parents with injured children.

 

He and others blame the Department of Justice, which administers the

Vaccine Fund, for making the process unnecessarily adversarial.

 

Some families said that in order to collect any compensation, they've

been forced into signing agreements that would keep information about

their cases from being published - information that could help other

parents caught in similar circumstances.

 

" I think if you talk to the average citizen in this country whose

child was dead or dying, who was suffering from lupus, and they said,

'I'll tell you what we'll do - we'll settle this thing as long as you

don't publish it', I think most people would think that was unseemly

(conduct) by the Federal Government, " Burton said.

 

The Department of Justice declined to comment for this report. But

during the congressional hearings, officials claimed that for the past

five years, they have been streamlining the process.

 

Yet since the fund was established 14 years ago, less than a third of

the 6,000 cases filed have resulted in compensation.

 

For many families facing years of mounting medical bills, the only

alternative is to do exactly what the bill hoped to prevent: file a

lawsuit. In Texas alone, three law firms in Houston and Dallas have

gathered nearly 5,000 vaccine injury cases.

 

Like the Lanes, these families have nothing to lose.

 

" You know that adage, 'We're going to force you to take this vaccine,

but we don't want to be responsible for what it does to you' - that's

basically what's happened, " Lane said.

 

There are at least three different bills that have popped up during

the past year that would alter the Vaccine Compensation Fund. The most

popular is the Burton/Waxman bill, proposed by a staunch Republican

and a die-hard Democrat.

 

The most notable change is that the bill would extend the statute of

limitations to file a claim to six years.

 

WFAA.Com October 4, 2002

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

 

This is all part of the national vaccine scam. First, our government

forces all children to get the vaccines under threat of not letting

them into the school system. Then they insulate the drug companies

from any liability by developing a compensation fund.

 

First of all, the government essentially forces everyone to get these

ineffective and harmful vaccines by threats of not letting children

into school without them. Few people understand that in 48 of the 50

states a religious exemption is allowed and one can enter school if

the appropriate forms are completed.

 

Secondly, the government forces parents to pay a tax on these

vaccines, which is supposed to provide a trust fund to pay for

injuries to the vaccine. The doctors pay the tax initially when they

purchase the vaccines, but this is passed right down to the parents of

the child.

 

Please recognize that once this program was instituted the drug

companies that make the vaccines are not liable for any damages that

result from their vaccines. Then to add insult to injury, over 80% of

the injured children who apply for vaccine compensation are turned

down. The government employs 17 full-time lawyers to defend these cases.

 

Fortunately, there are some options. One can prevent this whole mess

by not having your children immunized. If this seems like a radical

statement to you, please consider carefully reviewing the evidence below.

 

If you are convinced and need some practical help you can consider our

Vaccine Exemption Teleconference Audio Tape with Dr. Tenpenny.

 

Related Articles:

 

Dr. Mercola's Favorite Vaccine Links Page

 

http://www.mercola.com/2002/oct/23/vaccine_fund.htm