During an interview with CNBC, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla defended liability protections for vaccine manufacturers.
CNBC anchor Morgan Brennan said to Bourla, “Vaccine makers like yourself [are] largely shielded from liability.” She went on to ask, “If the products are safe and effective, what is the need to continue to shield, to have these liability shields, and what happens if those shields are changed or go away completely?”
“If the product is not safe and effective, we’ll never get approval from FDA or from the other health authorities,” Bourla said. “They are very strict when they are approving products, particularly for vaccines because exactly it’s given to healthy people.”
“However, in a system where litigations can flourish,” he claimed, “anyone could create a demand that the accident in the car happened because of a vaccine.”
“With a jury, it’s going to be maybe a flip of a coin,” Bourla continued. “This is, I think, why Congress, it was not an administration, had passed this legislation protecting those that they gave approval, through the FDA, from federal liabilities.”
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 established liability protections for vaccine manufacturers, asserting that they “shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death: (1) resulting from unavoidable side effects; or (2) solely due to the manufacturer’s failure to provide direct warnings.”
The law also established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program as an “alternative remedy to judicial action for specified vaccine-related injuries.”
