See Ronald Bailey, “We Lost the Lyme Vaccine. Under Rand Paul’s New Vaccine Liability Bill, We’ll Lose More.“: The End the Vaccine Carveout Act would expose vaccine makers to lawsuits that once drove companies out of the industry,” Reason (3.5.2026).
Pro-vaxxers and anti-vaxxers all seem to be going apeshit about this, from various angles. I’m no expert, I don’t follow all this nonsense closely, I’m just a caveman lawyer.
Bailey writes:
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) seems to have forgotten a key lesson from vaccine policy history. His End the Vaccine Carveout Act aims to weaken, if not abolish, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and strip COVID-19 vaccines of liability protection under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. The bill would allow “individuals who suffer vaccine-related injury or death to pursue direct civil action in state or federal court without first being forced into a federal no-fault system that limits recovery and restricts legal options.”
The only problem: been there, done that, and didn’t like it much.
Why did Congress vote to adopt the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986? In his 1985 article, “Vaccines and Product Liability: A Case of Contagious Litigation, “published in the Cato Institute’s Regulation magazine, legal scholar Edmund Kitch pointed to several badly decided state and federal product liability judgments that were driving many pharmaceutical companies out of the business of developing and manufacturing vaccines. Consequently, he explained that “the development of liability law now threatens to make both existing and promising new vaccines sporadically or entirely unavailable to a public and medical community that wants and needs them.” It was this trend toward erratic and excessive civil court tort judgments that worried Congress back then.In response to these concerns, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, creating the VICP, a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system that compensates people found to be injured by covered vaccines.
I ain’t got time for all these picayune details, but here’s my caveman libertarian federalist lawyer take:
- Federal tort lawsuits are unconstitutional in the first place
- State tort lawsuits have been out of control in the past, leading to tort reform at both federal and state level
- Federal laws limiting liability at the federal level should not be necessary since federal laws imposing liability in the first place are either unlibertarian or unconstitutional, e.g. copyright 1 (DMCA “safe harbor”) 2, vaccines/drugs
- That said, as long as there is federal liability, e.g. for copyright, DMCA liability limitations are good
- Federal laws limiting liability at the state state level are totally unconstitutional (ever heard of enumerated powers or federalism, boys?)
- That said, federal limitations on state defamation liability (e.g. CDA §230), although are unconstitutional, are still good from a libertarian results-oriented point of view (Higher Law)
- Neither states nor the general government (sometimes informally called called “the Federal Government”) 3 should be subsidizing drugs.
- The unconstitutional FDA should not exist and should have no power to “approve” or block the sale of any pharma or even—horrors!—a vaccine
- We need to get rid of medical licensing and also the prescription approval system.
- States should allow people to buy and use whatever drugs they want
- At the same time, they should adopt the caveat emptor policy and make it difficult to sue manufacturers for damage
- Anti-vaxxers should not oppose the FDA approving the covid vaccine
- But it should not be subsidized
- It should have no unconstitutional federal liability protection under state tort law
- Covid jab pushers should be liable for damages but with a healthy does of caveat emptor limiting stupid tort abuse
- And no, you ridiculous monomaniacal anti-vaxxers should not oppose the FDA “approving” the jab on the grounds that this falsely implies it’s “safe”
- The FDA should perhaps refrain from giving the jab its blessing or approval, but it should not ban it!
- Ever hear of the war on drugs, anti-vaxxer post-libertarian thuggocrats? 4
- And read this. FDA and Patent Reform: A Modest Proposal
In other words, the feds should stay out of it.
That is all. Caveman out.
- Copyright is Unconstitutional. [↩]
- No, Libertarians, We Should NOT Abolish the CDA §230 and DMCA Safe Harbors! [↩]
- The Unique American Federal Government. [↩]
- On Taxing Harvard: Ranting about Thuggocrats and Waystation/Post-libertarians
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