Summarised by Centrist
According to Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey A. Tucker, US vaccine regulation was shaped from the outset by the pharmaceutical industry itself.
“Through advertising, [pharmaceutical companies] have been able to shape media content,” Tucker writes. He argues that this later extended to digital platforms, removing dissenting views about vaccine safety and efficacy.
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allowed private firms to commercialise publicly funded research. The result, Tucker notes, was that the National Institutes of Health later shared “thousands of patents with pharma, with a market value approaching $1–2 billion.”
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 granted manufacturers liability protection. “No other industry enjoys such sweeping indemnification under the law,” Tucker writes, leaving injured patients locked out of normal courts.
He traces this pattern back to the Biologics Control Act of 1902. The implementation of strict regulation helped dominant firms eliminate competitors while restoring public trust after deadly contamination scandals.
“Several biologics producers went out of business because they were unable to pass PHS inspections,” according to historian Terry S Coleman.
The Supreme Court’s 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts ruling then cemented the model by blessing compulsory vaccination, and established that public health could override individual conscience.
By the time of COVID, the infrastructure for suppressing challenge was already in place, Tucker states. However, after 2020, attempts to label all vaccine doubt as “disinformation” succeeded only temporarily.
“The cat is now out of the bag,” Tucker says.
