For decades, children who developed autism after receiving routine vaccines have been denied justice. Their parents have been ridiculed, gaslighted, left to cope on their own. Kids suffered.

All because the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) determined vaccines didn’t cause autism in three “test” claims. Those three claims determined the fate of over 5,000 children in the NVICP’s Omnibus Autism Proceeding (OAP) — and those 5,000 children represented hundreds of thousands of vaccine-injured children.

This twisted miscarriage of justice directly affected the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, largely shielding the pharmaceutical industry from liability for vaccine injury.

Washington, D.C. — Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Staff Attorney Rolf Hazlehurst April 2, filed a motion in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims alleging that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), representing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), committed fraud in its representation of HHS in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding (OAP) in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).

CHD’s media release notes the OAP was established to consolidate and adjudicate the approximately 5,400 claims filed on behalf of children who regressed into autism following vaccination. In 2003, Hazlehurst filed a claim in the program on behalf of his son Yates, diagnosed with autism after suffering adverse reactions following routine childhood vaccines. Hazlehurst’s claim was one of six original “test cases” in 2007 that would decide the fate of all the other claims in the OAP.