At Long Last, the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines Returns to HHS

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday announced the return of the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines. For some, it’s been a long time coming; the original task force was illegally disbanded in 1998.

In a text message to The MAHA Report, Mary Holland, CEO of the Children’s Health Defense, applauded HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Kudos to Secretary Kennedy for fulfilling this reporting obligation of HHS Secretary under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act,” she wrote. “It took nearly 50 years for HHS to do this, but at last the Secretary is following the law on this critical issue. We are grateful. And kudos to attorney Ray Flores who recognized this unfulfilled obligation and set this HHS action in motion. Citizens can and do create real change for the better.”

The HHS said that the restored task force will have two major objectives. First, it will oversee the development, promotion, and, as the agency’s press release reads, "refinement of childhood vaccines that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than those vaccines currently on the market.” Second, it will oversee “improvements in vaccine development, production, distribution, and adverse reaction reporting — along with supporting research to make vaccines safer.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, NIH director, will chair the task force. “By reinstating this Task Force,” Bhattacharya said. “we are reaffirming our commitment to rigorous science, continuous improvement, and the trust of American families.”

The task force was created in 1986 under a provision of that year’s National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), which gives vaccine makers a liability shield for their products. In exchange for shielding pharmaceutical companies from negligence torts and similar legal actions, the government created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which legacy media seems to believe doesn’t exist as it rarely mentions it.

VICP is a government program that indemnifies vaccine companies from normal product liability. Because VICP’s procedures do not allow for the discovery process that uncovers evidence entered on the public record during the course of pre-trial activity, the NCVIA also created the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines in order to collect and publish evidence on vaccine safety, while also making recommendations for improving safety, in lieu of injunctive relief.

However, while VICP continues to exist, the task force designed to scrutinize vaccine safety does not. VICP itself is fraught with insufficiencies and corruption. Kennedy has promised to fix these systemic problems. Restoring the task force, which was supposed to be functioning and reporting to Congress for the past 27 years, may do just that.

Not surprisingly, however, the legacy media called on some of the usual vaccinology hacks to attack Kennedy’s decision to do what no HHS Secretary has done in almost three decades – follow the law.

Axios interviewed Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who claimed without evidence that Kennedy will use the task force “to legitimize his false claims about vaccine safety, which will then be used to manipulate the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.”

Continued Offit, “[Kennedy] will do nothing to make vaccines safer. But that's not really his goal. His goal is to lessen their use.”

This from the man who made his fortune as a vaccine developer while serving on the Advisory Commission on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the CDC entity which Kennedy wisely revamped with new members without ties to Big Pharma.

Of course Offit answered the phone when CNN called. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vaccine activist who has these fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs that vaccines are dangerous,” he told the legacy choir. “He is in a position now to be able to set up task forces like this one who will find some way to support his notion that vaccines are doing more harm than good.”

Axios and CNN appear unaware or disinterested in the fact that Offit is facing scrutiny because, as Calley Means pointed out in February, Offit draws a $1.5 million salary from Merck while promoting himself as an independent vaccine safety expert.

The Hill was no better, calling on vaccine advocate Dorit Reiss, a professor of Law at UC Law San Francisco, who stated, “It’s another politically-controlled forum that can be used for bad messaging and to make investment in and production of vaccines less viable.”

Not the best person to interview. In a Wake Forest Law Review article, The Benefits of Capture, Reiss extolls the virtues of government regulators co-opted by the very industries they’re tasked to regulate.

This is where we are and from where Kennedy wants to liberate us: a world featuring duplicitous Big Pharma advocates celebrated on legacy media for mocking Secretary Kennedy for obeying the law.

Takeaways:

• Secretary Kennedy is re-establishing the Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines in order to collect and publish evidence about vaccine safety, while making recommendations for improving safety.
• The vaccine safety task force was supposed to be functioning and reporting to Congress for the past twenty-seven years. Restoring it is simply following the law and respecting the intent of Congress.