WASHINGTON (May 19, 2026) — In comments filed on May 19th, a group of public health and administrative law scholars urged HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reject a petition seeking to dramatically expand the scope of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
The petition calls for adding hundreds of new injuries to the vaccine injury table at the center of the Act. Scholars point out that the evidence contained in the petition does not come anywhere close to justifying such a dramatic shift in childhood vaccine policy. They note that the petition primarily relies on a 2012 Institute of Medicine report that HHS has already extensively reviewed, along with manufacturer package inserts, which are not used to support secretarial determinations of causation under the standards established by the Act.
The scholars warn that granting the petition’s request would risk alarming families by creating false impressions about links between vaccines and injuries, potentially discouraging the use of lifesaving vaccines. Such a move would also overwhelm the table by opening the door to a huge number of unjustified claims, increasing the difficulties faced by parents with significant claims to secure compensation and ultimately would decrease the availability of lifesaving vaccines.
Congress enacted the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986 in order to keep vaccine supplies stable while also ensuring financial relief for families whose children did, in fact, experience an injury actually caused by a vaccine. Over four decades the program has maintained that balance by relying on carefully developed evidence showing a causal relationship between vaccines and injury. According to HHS data, between 1988 and 2024, the program, which offers a significantly more rapid means of recovery, paid out approximately $5.5 billion to nearly 13,000 families; just about half of all filed petitions resulted in a payment.
Since the program’s creation, each addition to the vaccine injury table has followed HHS review and extensive expert consultation in order to ensure that where a vaccine actually causes an adverse reaction, recovery is available.
In order to justify the addition of hundreds of vaccines to the table, the petition would upend this careful approach by replacing the law’s causation standard with a far lower one never envisioned by Congress. The petition would then use this lower standard, which contravenes the law itself, to justify a huge expansion of the table. As the scholars write, the petition “does not even assert, let alone try to establish, that its list of injuries satisfies the actual legal standard” embodied in the Act. As they note, the package inserts on which the petition relies provide no evidence of causation. Indeed, they note, only the Secretary can make such a determination, and historically such determinations have relied on independent evidence, not package inserts.
The comment can be found here and is a part of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program’s Health Scholars Legal Initiative.
Scholars are represented by Andrew J. Pincus of Mayer Brown LLP.
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