The Associated Press reported last week that "health officials said Wednesday that concerns over compensation for people injured by the smallpox vaccine are hampering the inoculation program, which has vaccinated just a few hundred people so far. Federal authorities acknowledge the problem but still have no solution." Workmen's compensation is one possible channel for funds to the small fraction of vaccine recipients who suffer side effects. Here in fiscally troubled New York City, officials will delay the vaccination program for months, pending a solution to the compensation problem.
ACSH is the last organization to suggest that activities with risks should not be undertaken (if a vaccine rarely has serious side effects, compensation can be made to the few injured while greatly enhancing the safety of the population as a whole). Still, the compensation mess is another reminder that emphasizing smallpox vaccination over anthrax vaccination was a strange decision on the government's part.
Anthrax is, as the anthrax murders of late 2001 showed, a real threat and the anthrax vaccine is completely safe. Thus, there would be no controversy over how to compensate people for side effects. As ACSH has repeatedly observed, the government, by proceeding with vaccinations for smallpox instead of anthrax, is distributing a slightly riskier vaccine for a far more hypothetical threat.
It's not an easy call no matter how one weighs the odds and no doubt the program will continue relatively smoothly but the failure to prepare compensation for those with smallpox vaccine side effects makes one wonder how carefully the government thought through all the ramifications of its policy decision.
