NVIC does not make vaccine use recommendations. NVIC advocates for protection of human rights, including the right to autonomy and freedom of thought, speech and conscience, and supports the ethical principle of informed consent to medical risk taking. ^{2 3 4 5}  NVIC works to secure informed consent protections, including flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions to vaccination, in public health policies and laws. ⁶ NVIC supports adoption of the precautionary principle based on the Hippocratic “first, do no harm” approach to public health policymaking. ^{7 8}

To encourage well-informed and voluntary vaccine decision-making, NVIC sponsors national vaccine education campaigns. In 2011, NVIC sponsored a digital vaccine education billboard in New York City’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve and produced a flu prevention video for Delta Airline’s in-flight programming. In 2013, NVIC launched a national vaccine education billboard and ad campaign that featured billboards on highways and buses New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Illinois, Texas, Georgia and Colorado, Vermont and other states. In 2015 and 2016, NVIC’s message advocating for vaccine education and choice was up in Times Square, as well.

 In 2019, NVIC's “Vaccination: Know the Risks and Failures” and “No Forced Vaccination” animated digital message is being displayed on a giant 56 foot by 29 foot electronic screen in the heart of Times Square Plaza at 1500 Broadway (where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve). More than one million people pass through Times Square daily and NVIC’s 10-second spot (as seen at the top of this screen - click on it to view) will be broadcast a minimum of three times per hour for 20 hours per day from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. from Valentines day through April 2019.

Like prescription 🤬, vaccines are commercial pharmaceutical products that carry two risks: a risk the vaccine product will fail to work ^{9 10} and a risk the vaccine product will cause harm. ^{11 12} However, unlike with prescription and over the counter 🤬, manufacturers of vaccines and doctors who administer vaccines have no liability when a person is injured or dies after being given a recommended childhood vaccine licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as safe and effective.

In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and codified into law government acknowledgement that federally licensed and  recommended and state mandated vaccines can and do unpredictably cause injury and death.  The Act created a federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) alternative to a vaccine injury lawsuit against drug companies. ¹³ By 2019, the VICP had awarded more than $4 billion in federal compensation to vaccine injured children and adults. ¹⁴ 

Learn more about how to file a claim in the federal vaccine injury compensation program.

In 2011 in a split decision in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, the US Supreme Court majority ruled that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” and effectively removed all liability from drug companies, even if there was evidence a drug company could have made a vaccine safer. ^{15 16}

In a series of reports published between 1991 and 2013, the Institute of Medicine affirmed that scientific evidence demonstrates that vaccines can cause injury and death and that some people are genetically, biologically and environmentally at higher risk for being harmed by vaccines but doctors do not know how to identify who they are before vaccination. ^{17 18 19 20 21}  Even so, federal health officials have narrowed contraindications to vaccination and eliminated almost all health conditions from qualifying for a medical exemption to vaccination. ²²

When liability free pharmaceutical products can cause injury and death, especially when some people are biologically more vulnerable to suffering harm but doctors do not know how to predict who they are, protection of the human right to informed consent to medical risk taking becomes even more important. ²³The legal right to exercise flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions to vaccination ensures that human rights are protected in public health policies and laws. ²⁴

Like the first vaccine for smallpox, ²⁵ every vaccine licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommended by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials and medical trade associations carries a risk for serious complications, such as brain inflammation, which can lead to chronic brain and immune system damage or death. ^{26 27 28 29 30}   

There is a wide spectrum of vaccine complications, which have been identified and acknowledged in the medical literature and by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences, including:  ³¹ 

In 2012, the IOM published a report, Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality, ³² and acknowledged there are genetic, biological and environmental high risk factors not yet identified that can increase “individual susceptibility” to vaccine reactions but most of the time doctors cannot predict who is at risk:

“Both epidemiologic and mechanistic research suggests that most individuals who experience an adverse reaction to vaccines have a pre-existing susceptibility. These predispositions can exist for a number of reasons – genetic variants (in human or microbiome DNA), environmental exposures, behaviors, intervening illness or developmental stage, to name just a few, all of which can interact. Some of these adverse reactions are specific to the particular vaccine, while others may not be. Some of these predispositions may be detectable prior to the administration of vaccine; others, at least with current technology and practice, are not.” – Institute of Medicine ³³ 

In 2013, the IOM published another report, The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence and Future Studies, ³⁴ which studied the scientific evidence regarding the safety of the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule for children from birth to age six. The IOM committee evaluating the evidence stated that there are significant gaps in scientific knowledge about children, who are biologically at higher risk for suffering vaccine injury and death:

“ The committee found that evidence assessing outcomes in subpopulations of children, who may be potentially susceptible to adverse reactions to vaccines (such as children with a family history of autoimmune disease or allergies or children born prematurely), was limited and is characterized by uncertainty about the definition of populations of interest and definitions of exposures or outcomes.” – Institute of Medicine ³⁵ 

The CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule recommends all children receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines with 50 doses of 14 vaccines given between the day of birth and age 18. ³⁶  The majority of children in the U.S. today receive three times as many vaccinations as children received in 1983. ³⁷

The 2013 IOM Committee, which examined the safety of the current federally recommended early childhood vaccine schedule found that it had not been fully scientifically evaluated:

 “Most vaccine-related research focuses on the outcomes of single immunizations or combinations of vaccines administered at a single visit. Although each new vaccine is evaluated in the context of the overall immunization schedule that existed at the time of review of that vaccine, elements of the schedule are not evaluated once it is adjusted to accommodate a new vaccine. Thus, key elements of the entire schedule – the number, frequency, timing, order and age at administration of vaccines – have not been systematically examined in research studies;” – Institute of Medicine ³⁸

Outstanding Questions About Vaccines & Chronic Illness 

Due to a lack of enough methodologically sound studies conducted and published in the medical literature, the 2013 IOM Committee was unable to determine if the early childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the CDC and medical trade associations is or is not associated with the development of the following chronic brain and immune disorders and disabilities in children: ³⁹

According to https://www.cdc.gov/features/adultvaccinations/index.html