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Comment by alyx | Hacker News Reader

Many "anti-vaxxers" are simply concerned parents.

Considering that vaccines (in general) have been deemed "unavoidably unsafe" at the Supreme Court level, they are not completely unjustified in their fears. [0]

Vaccine manufactures cannot be held liable.

Thus there is a "National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program" put in place to compensate those that have been damaged by vaccinations.

To date, over $4 billion dollars has been paid out in damages. [1]

Just as mentioned in this article, side effects are major deterrents of any medication. And significant efforts need to be made in order to ensure that side effects do not occlude positives effects.

[0]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf

[1]: https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compen...

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I think you're misreading the supreme court ruling because you're misinterpreting the term unavoidably unsafe.

"In short, “unavoidably unsafe” is simply a legal term that means the manufacture is not liable because they cannot do anything to make the product safer. It does not mean that the product is dangerous and should be avoided."

This could apply to peanut butter because of peanut butter allergies. The manufacture is not liable for someone who dies of a peanut butter allergy when they eat peanut butter because this is not due to manufacturing defects but is due to the inherent nature of peanut butter being "unavoidable unsafe".

This does't mean peanut butter or vaccines are dangerous.

The Supreme Court consists of zero medical doctors.

Do not take a legal opinion and present it as medical fact.

From your [0]:

> Whereas between 1978 and 1981 only nine product-liability suits were filed against DTP manufactur-ers, by the mid-1980’s the suits numbered more than 200 each year.6 This destabilized the DTP vaccine market, causing two of the three domestic manufacturers to with-draw; and the remaining manufacturer, Lederle Laborato-ries, estimated that its potential tort liability exceeded itsannual sales by a factor of 200.

So did vaccines suddenly become dangerous after 1980? Or did people develop irrational fear?

If you read further it plainly says that the "National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program" was started to mollify these anti-vaxxers to try to get them to vaccinate:

> significant number of parents were already declining vaccination for their children,10 and concerns about compensation threatened to depress vaccination rates even further.11 This was a source of concern to public health officials, since vaccines are effective in preventing out-breaks of disease only if a large percentage of the population is vaccinated.12

> To stabilize the vaccine market and facilitate compensa-tion, Congress enacted the NCVIA in 1986.

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