No More Gaslighting About Vaccine Injury

The move earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to launch a clinical research program and center dedicated to studying “patients experiencing health problems following vaccination” is described as an effort to “to strengthen how the federal government identifies, documents, investigates, and responds to health problems reported following vaccination, with a focus on improving patient care and generating better evidence about potential vaccine-related injuries.”^{1 2 3 4 5} According to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr:

We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries—not dismiss or gaslight them. President Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer. This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions.^{1 3 5}

Vaccine Injury is Real

Kudos to the U.S. government for this important health initiative. Since the enactment of the historic National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986, which was the first time the federal government acknowledged that vaccine injuries and deaths are real and that prevention of vaccine injuries and deaths should be made a public health priority, federal agencies have been stubbornly reluctant to discuss the issue of vaccine safety and consistently trying to ignore the existence of vaccine injuries and deaths. So it is welcome news that HHS under Secretary Kennedy is highlighting the fact that vaccine risks are likely a much bigger problem than the government, the pharmaceutical industry, and medical trade associations have been willing to admit, much less meaningfully address.

The research and policy reform initiative will be broken up into four parts. The first is the opening of a new clinic at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland to allow NIH clinicians and researchers to evaluate patients who have reported injuries after being vaccinated, study their experiences, looking at potential causes, and come up with better approaches to care for them. The clinic opened on October 5.⁵

The second part of the HHS initiative is a proposal to reimburse doctors for actively reporting suspected vaccine-related injuries. Under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, health care providers are legally required to report specific adverse events listed in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Table of Reportable Events Following Vaccination if they occur within a specified time period after vaccination.^{5 6} Although reporting vaccine adverse events was a requirement under the Act, no penalty was attached for failure to report.

Some studies have concluded that many physicians do not file VAERS reports after observing an adverse event following vaccination.  Many doctors and other vaccine administrators are unaware of the mandatory reporting requirement, and are unfamiliar with how to make a report to VAERS. In a study published in the journal Vaccine, the researchers found that more than 25 percent of health care providers surveyed had not even heard of VAERS.^{7 8}  

Instead of penalizing doctors for failing to make a repot to VAERS, the financial reimbursement idea would provide an incentive for doctors to submit suspected vaccine-related injury reports to VAERS—something they otherwise might not do because of the time and effort it takes to fill out these reports.

The third part of the initiative would require that a vaccine-related adverse event report be made a part of an individual’s electronic health record (HER) so that this information can be available any time he or she visits a medical clinic, hospital, or anywhere else they may receive medical care. This can serve as a critical alert to a health care provider of a patient’s previous reaction to a vaccine that might weigh into a treatment decision.⁵

Lastly, the initiative calls for modernizing VAERS to make the process of reporting to it simpler, more accessible, and easier to use. On Sept. 28, 2026, the CDC awarded a $990,000 contract to information technology firm SPN Solutions, Inc. of Fairfax, Virginia to build a modernized application for consumer and health care provider reporting to VAERS, which includes making it accessible on mobile devices. Health care providers will eventually have the convenience and flexibility to submit reports to VAERS via their smartphones and tablets.⁵

We Must Listen to Those Who Have Been Injured

The goal of all these changes is to come up with a more accurate system of monitoring vaccine-related injuries and better understanding the full impact of vaccination on the U.S. population. Even more, they are about trying to create a culture in which vaccine injured people are listened to and taken seriously, rather than ignored or gaslit and psychologically abused by being accused of only imagining they are vaccine injured. This is especially true in the case of mothers who suspect their children have become vaccine only to be waved away and patronizingly told by a pediatrician that they are being hysterical and overly concerned about their child’s regression into poor health after receiving one or many rounds of vaccines.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the nonprofit National Vaccine Information Center, stressed:

[Pediatricians] need to listen to the mothers when they describe vaccine reactions. … The mother knows her child in a way no one else does. The mother knows with all of her senses that her child changed.^{9 10}

She added, “Mothers, who are primarily responsible for taking children to the doctor and holding them while vaccinations are given, must stop being intimidated by physicians.”¹¹

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