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 POLITICO Pro, in “Scientists and RFK Jr. Want Vaccine Data—for Very Different Reasons,” by Lauren Gardner. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
Trump campaign surrogate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he wants to see more data on vaccine safety.
So do public health experts and vaccine scientists — but for different reasons.
Four vaccine experts this summer called on Congress to boost funding to study the safety of vaccines already on the market. They hope to use an established excise tax that drugmakers pay into an injury compensation fund that’s long run a surplus, which they say wouldn’t trigger pay-for rules or cut into payments for patients. It’s not because they fear shots pose undue risks; rather, they argue, flagging public confidence in the immunization system demands it. …
The no-fault system generally shields companies from an onslaught of litigation that could drain resources and prompt their exit from the vaccine market — which is what occurred in the early 1980s when a raft of lawsuits were filed over alleged injuries from the pertussis vaccine.
If drug companies lost their protection, they could be subsumed under an avalanche of litigation. Even if it is mostly frivolous, the drug companies might decide to abandon the vaccine market rather than deal with the headache for a product that makes them a relatively small profit.
“You take away those liability protections from manufacturers, you are going to see a collapse in the vaccines marketplace,” said Richard Hughes IV, a health lawyer at Epstein Becker Green who was a public policy executive at Moderna during the Covid pandemic.
Indeed, many manufacturers stopped making the pertussis shot, which dramatically lowered incidences of whooping cough in the U.S. — but also, in rare instances, caused febrile seizures. A different vaccine technology for pertussis replaced that product in the U.S. in the early 1990s.
