THE PLOT AGAINST VACCINES

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his allies have hit on a way to undermine immunization.

- Kiera Butler and Anna Merlan

THE SEEDS OF a court case that has lasted for more than 20 years were planted in February 2001, when the parents of 11-month-old Yates Hazlehurst took him to the doctor for a routine measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Soon after, his family would allege in a court hearing, Yates became “wild,” “very hyperactive,” and “out of control.”

“By the summer of 2001,” a US federal appeals court judge would later write, “Yates had lost all meaningful speech, even though he had previously used words such as ‘mama,’ ‘please,’ and ‘thank you.’ At about the same time, he developed chronic diarrhea and abdominal pain. Following a series of evaluations in July 2002, Yates was diagnosed as exhibiting a pattern of behavior consistent with autism.”

In 2003, the Hazlehurst family filed a claim with the Office of Special Masters of the US Court of Federal Claims. The office is part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which was established in the 1980s by Congress to compensate people who are able to prove a likely vaccine injury. The money comes from a fund of billions of dollars accumulated from a small excise tax applied to most childhood vaccines.

From 2006 to 2023, about 70 percent of those who brought cases were awarded money without going to trial. Given the safety of vaccines, in the majority of those cases, the government did not conclude that a vaccine was responsible for the alleged injury. Instead, as the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, which keeps data about vaccine injury claims, explains, the government might settle based on precedent or “to minimize the time and expense of litigating a case.”

More challenging cases are evaluated not by a jury or a trial judge, but in a separate courtroom presided over by special masters, judicial appointees who have extensive knowledge in vaccine injury cases.