Richard H. Hughes, IV, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Axios Future of Healthcare newsletter, in “Vaccine Policy Changes Under RFK Jr.,” by Caitlin Owens.
Following is an excerpt:
What we're watching: The childhood vaccine schedule. One of the biggest pieces of news from the summer was Kennedy's revamp of a vaccine advisory committee, ousting previous members in favor of replacements more aligned with his views. ...
“They're just recommendations, but we've built the system around it. You take out the recommendation and the system collapses,” said Richard Hughes, a professor of vaccine law at George Washington University and a partner at Epstein, Becker & Green. ...
The vaccine compensation program: Kennedy has said he wants to reform the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which was created by statute in 1986 to shield vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits—an effort to avoid vaccine shortages—while compensating people injured by vaccines. ...
“You see the suggestion that they're going to expand some of the conditions on the injury table in a way that would create this backdoor opportunity to get autism claims in,” Hughes said. ...
Increased liability could, in the worst-case scenario, drive vaccine makers out of the U.S.
“That risk is very real,” Hughes said. “There’s a track record there of spiraling vaccine markets before we had the injury compensation program.”
