Action Alert: Parents Demand Compensation for All Vaccine-Injured Children.

In the early 1980s manufacturers threatened to stop making vaccines unless Congress passed federal legislation protecting them from vaccine injury lawsuits. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 established a national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) effective in 1988 and designed to be a no-fault, non-adversarial alternative to
lawsuit. During the last year, three legislative attempts have been made to protect Eli Lilly from liability for thimerosal in childhood vaccines. Outraged parents demanded that legislators remove the "Lilly rider" from the Homeland Security Act and this was accomplished in January 2003 with the passage of the Omnibus Appropriation Bill. This bill also carried a provision that the VICP be reviewed in the first six months of 2003 and this review is currently underway in Congress.