Kennedy said over the summer that the program would be revolutionized, including by addressing the lack of discovery.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking at updating symptoms after vaccination that are eligible for compensation under a federal program, an adviser said on Sept. 25.
“We have a team looking at … a way to capture these kids,” Andrew Downing, senior policy adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told an autism roundtable in Washington.
“Do we broaden the definition of encephalopathic events? Do we broaden neurological injuries? How do we do that?
“I was hoping that the changes to the program might have been rolled out before today, so that I could talk more in depth about them. As you can imagine, it’s not my place to do the rollout.”
Downing is a lawyer who has represented individuals seeking compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The program was established by Congress to award damages to those who suffer vaccine-related injuries. He joined the HHS after Kennedy took office in February.
Kennedy said over the summer that the program would be revolutionized, including by addressing the lack of discovery.
The program has an enormous backlog of thousands of cases, just eight special masters who are able to adjudicate cases, and a table of eligible injuries that critics argue is too small.
Downing told the crowd on Thursday that when he first began filing cases with the program, encephalopathy cases could be approved for compensation if there was supportive medical literature. In rare cases, lawyers would have to bring in an expert.
The definition was changed in the 1990s, “making it almost impossible for a family to prevail,” he said.
The Department of Justice, which represents the HHS in cases filed with the program, later made it even harder to win some cases, according to Downing.
One change that should happen is that in borderline cases, compensation should be awarded to injured people, Downing said.
“That is how the vaccine program was originally designed, and it’s been hijacked, for lack of a better word. Hopefully not for much longer,” he added.
Downing also described autism as a collection of symptoms and said that autism can be caused by vaccine-induced inflammation.
