Supreme Court considers consequences in vaccine case
In the case before the high court, the parents of an 18-year-old woman who suffers from severe developmental disabilities want to sue a vaccine manufacturer and argue broad legal immunity for such companies shouldn't apply in this case.
They challenged a 1986 federal law that says vaccine manufacturers can't be sued "if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings."
Much of Tuesday's arguments focused on the meaning of the word "unavoidable" in the context of the law.
Attorneys for the parents of Hannah Bruesewitz said the adverse effects she suffered could have been avoided because the company, Pfizer Inc.'s Wyeth, had a safer vaccine available when she was immunized in 1991.
Attorneys for Wyeth dispute that a safer alternative existed.
Several justices said the Bruesewitzes' argument that the side effects were avoidable because a safer vaccine could have been used was problematic.
Justice Antonin Scalia said that allowing people to sue vaccine manufacturers on the basis that another company makes a safer vaccine could lead to manufacturers removing potentially harmful ingredients, which would make vaccines safer, but far less effective.
"As has been said, the government interprets 'unavoidable' to mean unavoidable with respect to the vaccine that has been approved," Justice Scalia said. "If it doesn't mean that, if it simply means unavoidable with some other vaccine, you could always avoid them if you have a vaccine that is significantly less effective."
But other justices, such as Justice Sonia Sotomayor, expressed concerns that the immunity vaccine manufacturers have provides no motivation for them to improve vaccines and make them safer. She also didn't seem to buy the arguments that allowing certain cases to go to court would cripple the vaccine-manufacturing industry.
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