Under this program, petitions for compensation for injuries incurred by compulsory childhood vaccinations may be presented. Per the organization's website, Congress supposedly intended for this vaccine compensation program to make it easier to obtain compensation for vaccine damages, rather than having to go through traditional litigation procedures. The "court" you see, is merely a board of eight Special Masters that are appointed to serve four-year terms; they aren't even elected officials. Rather than appear before a court with a jury of your peers, you instead present your case to a group of appointed bureaucrats.
You can see where things began to go awry, can't you?
It is this Office of Special Masters that is charged with paying out millions in damages to vaccine-damaged people and their families. The statute of limitations is just three years from the time symptoms begin after the administration of a vaccine. In the instance of death, that window is shortened to a mere two years. When parents are forced to make their case against government attorneys in a government-owned courtroom, how can anyone truly feel that justice is being served?
As Natural Blaze points out, usually when a product fails, the onus is on the manufacturer to prove it wasn't at fault. However, in Vaccine Court, it is up to the families of the injured to prove a connection between cause and effect. Since diagnostic criteria laid out by the American Psychiatric Association has changed several times over the years, proving such a connection can be quite difficult. It can take anywhere from two to 10 years for Vaccine Court cases to reach a resolution; because of this, recipients of financial compensation really only represent a small fraction of the number of people who have been harmed by vaccines.
Since 1989, roughly $3 billion has been paid out to families, and more than $120 million has been paid out to cover legal fees and attorney costs. All financial restitution is funded by an excise tax on vaccines placed on every dose of vaccine set by the CDC, and paid for by the taxpayer (i.e., the injured party). So, rather than forcing Big Pharma to pay for the damage they cause, that cost is then levied onto taxpayers. When you or your insurance company pays for a vaccine, you are also paying for the compensation program.
Many people do not even know that they can report vaccine injuries through the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), nor that they can file for financial compensation. The VAERS website itself admits that there are many shortcomings to its passive reporting system, including "the fact that VAERS receives reports for only a small fraction of actual adverse events." Some estimates indicate that the under-reporting to VAERS is so dramatic that the system really only represents about 1 percent of all vaccine-related adverse events.
The reliance on such a passive and poorly managed system makes it relatively useless for obtaining any kind of real data on the frequency of vaccine injuries. The VAERS website itself notes infants' risk of certain medical issues, including high fevers, seizures and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The website then claims, "Some infants will experience these medical events shortly after a vaccination by coincidence." The website also notes that their data contains both "coincidental events" and "those truly caused by vaccines."
There is a desperate lack of real information on vaccine safety and the frequency of vaccine damage. The mainstream media remains totally complicit in this by dismissing the legitimacy of vaccine damage – and defaming anyone who dares to question vaccine safety.
Together, these institutions prevent the American public from ever knowing the truth about the harm vaccines can cause. They protect vaccine manufacturers at a terrible cost to the people of this country – not just in dollars, but by the sheer volume of people affected by vaccine injury.
Sources: