[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 14 (Thursday, February 14, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  THE NATIONAL VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION PROGRAM IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 
                                  2002

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 13, 2002

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to be introducing 
legislation today to help families that are trying to cope with 
children who have suffered vaccine-related injuries.
  Vaccine injuries may be very rare, but when they do occur, they're 
devastating. Fifteen years ago, we created the National Vaccine Injury 
Compensation Program. It was supposed to be generous. It was supposed 
to be non-adversarial. It was supposed to compensate families without 
tying them up in court for years.
  Too many times, this program hasn't worked the way we intended. Last 
fall, we held two hearings. We heard testimony from parents of injured 
children. We heard testimony from husbands of injured wives. They told 
us about long delays. They told us about overly adversarial tactics. 
They told us about having to fight for years over injuries that are 
widely acknowledged to be related to vaccines. We've also heard from 
families who learned about the program too late to file claims. There 
is a bipartisan consensus that reforms are needed.
  Not every family has faced these kinds of problems. Many families 
have worked their way through the system without facing the kinds of 
ordeals we've heard about. However, too many families have faced too 
many problems for us to sit by and do nothing.
  I want to thank Henry Waxman, the Ranking Minority Member of the 
Government Reform Committee for working with me to put this bill 
together. I want to thank Dave Weldon, one of our subcommittee 
chairmen, for working with us as well. I also want to thank our other 
original cosponsors, Jerrold Nadler, Constance Morella, Benjamin 
Gilman, Stephen Horn, Martin Frost, John Duncan, Dennis Kucinich, Jo 
Ann Davis and Tom Davis.
  This bill doesn't do everything we'd like to do to fix this program. 
It's not going to eliminate some of the problems families are 
encountering. However, I think it's a good first step. I think it's a 
realistic assessment of what we can accomplish this year. This bill 
does some very worthwhile things: It changes the calculation for future 
lost earnings for injured children to make it more generous.
  It increases the level of compensation a family receives after a 
vaccine-related death from $250,000 to $300,000. It allows families of 
vaccine-injured children to be compensated for the costs of family 
counseling and creating and maintaining a guardianship to administer 
the award. It allows for the payment of interim attorneys fees and 
costs while a petition is being adjudicated. It extends the statute of 
limitations for seeking compensation to six years instead of three. It 
provides a one-time, two-year period for families to file a petition if 
they were previously excluded from doing so because they missed the 
statute of limitations.
  I want to briefly mention a couple of the stories we heard during our 
hearings so my colleagues will have a better understanding of the kinds 
of problems families are facing.
  The first story involves Janet Zuhlke and her daughter Rachel of 
Florida. Rachel received her pre-kindergarten vaccinations in 1990. 
Within 6 hours, she had a severe reaction. Within three weeks, she was 
in critical condition and had to be medi-vac'd to a hospital. Today, 
Rachel is a mentally retarded teenager. She suffers from periodic bouts 
of blindness and severe neurological breakdowns that leave her confined 
to a wheelchair.
  Rachel's condition is known as an encephalopathy. Medical experts 
agree that this is one of the most common injuries caused by vaccines. 
The connection is so well-established, it's written into the table of 
vaccine injuries in the law. Despite this, the government attorneys 
fought for nine years to try to prove a questionable theory that 
Rachel's injury was caused by a strep infection. For nine years, Janet 
Zuhlke has had to pay all of Rachel's medical bills without any help.
  Last year, she finally won her case. But the process drags on. It 
could still be another year before the Zuhlkes receive a penny.
  Next, I want to talk about the case of Lori Barton and her son Dustin 
of Arizona. Dustin received a DTP shot in 1989. He began to have subtle 
seizures within hours. Eventually, he was diagnosed with residual 
seizure disorder and he became legally blind.
  The Barton's filed for compensation, but the government lawyer 
assigned to the case set out to prove that Dustin's seizures didn't 
start as soon after the shot as Lori claimed. At their first hearing in 
1993, that lawyer's tactics were so abusive that she was reprimanded by 
the special master overseeing the case. Lori Barton testified that she 
felt like she was being treated like a criminal. It took them four 
years to get to the next hearing, in August 1997. Three months later, 
Dustin suffered a massive seizure and died.
  In 1999, eight years after the Bartons filed their petition, they 
were finally awarded compensation. But there was one final hitch. The 
government threatened to appeal the decision unless the Barton's agreed 
not to have it published so it couldn't serve as a precedent for other 
families. That's wrong, and we shouldn't accept it.
  As I said before, every family that enters the program isn't treated 
this way. Not every government lawyer is abusive. There are many people 
who work in this program who sincerely want to help these families. But 
these aren't isolated incidents. We have real problems here, and 
Congress needs to address them. For many of these families, the deck is 
stacked against them, and that's not right.
  I want to thank my colleagues who've worked with me to put together 
this legislation--the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Improvement 
Act of 2002. It has strong bipartisan support. There are other problems 
that go beyond the scope of this bill, and we need to address those. 
But this is a good first step. I hope all of my colleagues will support 
it.

                          ____________________