What You Should Know About Lawsuits Against Vaccines
By Ryan Hassan, MD, MPH
A colleague of mine recently spoke with a patient who had concerns about the HPV vaccine. The patient heard about a lawsuit against Merck, the manufacturer of the Gardasil HPV vaccine, alleging that the vaccine caused “injuries.” As a matter of fact, there have been numerous lawsuits against drug manufacturers for HPV and other vaccines. Many lawsuits have been dismissed for lack of merit, and others continue to work their way through the courts. This post addresses what these lawsuits mean for patients and parents making vaccine decisions for themselves and their children.
Are We Sure Vaccines Are Safe?
Yes. A lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer does not mean that a vaccine is not safe or effective. By the time a vaccine is approved for use in the United States (U.S.), it has already undergone rigorous safety and effectiveness studies involving tens of thousands of people. Even after a vaccine is released to the public, it undergoes ongoing testing to ensure continued safety and effectiveness.
The HPV vaccine, which protects against human papillomavirus and the cancers it causes, has been administered over 100 million times in the U.S. The most serious side effect of the HPV vaccine is a severe but treatable allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. This happens in about 3 people out of every million doses given. Numerous studies have found no association with any other significant medical complications (1). On the other hand, about 126 men and women out of every million in the United States will develop human papillomavirus-associated cancer each year, and many of them will eventually die from it (2). It is estimated that nearly every sexually active adult in the U.S. will be exposed to this virus at some point in their lives (3). The HPV vaccine prevents these cancers and deaths and does not cause any side effects of even remotely comparable severity.
If Vaccines Are Safe, Why Do Parents File Lawsuits?
In the United States, anyone can file a lawsuit against a person or corporation if they have the money and motivation to do so. Almost all lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers are funded and supported by anti-vaccine organizations, like the ones operated by the Disinformation Dozen, even though the names of the families suing the manufacturers change with each lawsuit.
What makes vaccines a target for lawsuits? Millions of people get vaccinated each year. Millions of people also get sick, develop health problems, and die every day. Sometimes those health problems and deaths happen to us after we eat a cheeseburger; sometimes they happen after we go for a swim; and sometimes they happen after we receive a vaccine. Just because two events happen in proximity to one another does not mean that one caused the other. As chemist and science writer Dr. Derek Lowe put it:
“If you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That's how many people die and get sick anyway… But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there's a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine.” (5)
As humans, we want to understand why horrible things happen to us or our loved ones. We want to find a cause to prevent it from happening again. When we wake up feeling healthy, we don’t attribute it to our being vaccinated against infectious diseases that used to decimate populations. On the other hand, if we feel unwell or develop a health problem after receiving a vaccine, it can be very tempting to blame the vaccine. Now imagine being in that situation, and then being targeted by a well-funded, well-organized anti-vaccine movement that recruits families to file lawsuits and promote their agenda.
There will always be people who will try to blame random, unfortunate health complications on vaccines. They are rightfully seeking answers for their children’s suffering, and sometimes it leads to filing a lawsuit without scientific evidence. We don’t need to wait for these cases to be dismissed, or to be considered by a judge who knows nothing about vaccine science, to make our own decisions about vaccinating. We already have all of the scientific evidence we need to know that vaccines work and are among the safest, most closely monitored medicines we have.
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