Vaccine Injury Claims Face Grueling Fight

Like good moms everywhere, Janet Zuhlke made sure her kids got their shots.

This proved disastrous for her daughter, Rachel. She was a healthy 5-year-old until a brain injury triggered by a routine vaccination left her mentally retarded, physically handicapped and legally blind.

A single mother raising three daughters in Satellite Beach, Fla., Zuhlke needed help with the enormous costs of Rachel's lifetime care. So she brought a case in a federal tribunal set up to handle vaccine injury claims.

There, opposing lawyers hired expert witnesses to prove that Rachel's injuries weren't vaccine-related. When that failed, they balked at paying for costly medicines her doctors said she badly needed.

The Zuhlkes finally won -- but it took more than 10 years.

"I thought it was very cruel," Zuhlke said. "People were very aware of the fact that my family was suffering."

The lawyers who opposed the Zuhlkes were not working for a vaccine company but the Justice Department. Government attorneys fought relentlessly to defeat a mother who thought she was doing the right thing by getting her daughter a government-mandated vaccine.

It wasn't supposed to happen that way in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, informally known as the vaccine court. Created by Congress and jointly run by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Justice Department and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, it was designed to shield vaccine makers from damage awards that were threatening to drive them from the business.

It also was supposed to compensate victims in rare cases of injury under a flexible, no-fault system that would avoid the rancor and delay of traditional litigation. Claims were to be handled "quickly, easily and with certainty and generosity," said a House report accompanying the legislation in 1986.

Instead, say advocates for families with injury claims, federal officials often fight them with such zeal that many who deserve help are denied it, and even successful cases get bogged down for years.

The program "was supposed to be non-adversarial and it's become very adversarial," said Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), whose House Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness has held hearings on the matter. Many have "had legitimate claims and they went on for eight, nine, 10 years."

Vaccine compensation officials refused to be interviewed, but in written statements they said the program had "an excellent record of promptly and appropriately compensating" valid claims.