VACCINE DOSE HISTORY

Vaccine doses have increased dramatically since the time that most of today's parents were children.   The number of shots remained fairly steady from the 1960s to the early 1980s (the only difference was elimination of the small pox series in 1972).  Since the mid-1980s,  the number of vaccines has grown from  24  doses to 72  doses, and children must now get 4, 5 or even 6 shots in a single doctor's visit.

The increase in vaccines occurred after Congress passed the  National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986 which declared that vaccines were “unavoidably unsafe”. This Act created the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). It is estimated that less than 1% of serious reactions are ever reported to VAERS. In addition, the monetary compensation in this “vaccine court” is limited to relatively nominal amounts. Still, the VICP has paid out almost $4.5 billion since inception. These injury awards are funded through tax collected on every vaccine dose, hence they are funded by the American people rather than the pharmaceutical companies. 

Vaccines are now very profitable for the pharmaceutical industry.  The 1986 act means that manufacturers bear no liability costs and have little incentive to do more than the minimum testing to get FDA approval.  Manufacturers also have low marketing costs as the CDC does the marketing for them by adding the vaccine to its schedule.  It's little wonder that there are over 200 additional vaccines currently in the works.