Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) seems to have forgotten a key lesson from vaccine policy history. His End the Vaccine Carveout Act aims to weaken, if not abolish, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and strip COVID-19 vaccines of liability protection under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act's Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. The bill would allow "individuals who suffer vaccine-related injury or death to pursue direct civil action in state or federal court without first being forced into a federal no-fault system that limits recovery and restricts legal options."

The only problem: been there, done that, and didn't like it much.

Why did Congress vote to adopt the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986? In his 1985 article, "Vaccines and Product Liability: A Case of Contagious Litigation," published in the Cato Institute's Regulation magazine, legal scholar Edmund Kitch pointed to several badly decided state and federal product liability judgments that were driving many pharmaceutical companies out of the business of developing and manufacturing vaccines. Consequently, he explained that "the development of liability law now threatens to make both existing and promising new vaccines sporadically or entirely unavailable to a public and medical community that wants and needs them." It was this trend toward erratic and excessive civil court tort judgments that worried Congress back then.

In response to these concerns, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, creating the VICP, a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system that compensates people found to be injured by covered vaccines.

Along with rising Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory costs and relatively poor investment returns compared to other pharmaceutical products, a 2003 analysis published by the National Academy of Sciences noted in addition that "growing concern about liability exposure" led to a "rash" exit of pharmaceutical companies from vaccine manufacturing. Between 1967 and 1980, the number of vaccine manufacturers had already dropped from 26 to 17, including eight domestic firms. By 1996, the number of companies making vaccines licensed in the U.S. had further fallen to just 8. Today, the U.S. vaccine market is dominated by five companies.

The creation of the VICP's no-fault damage award system did not prevent consolidation of vaccine manufacturing but it could have been worse. The big red flag is the case of Lyme disease vaccine LYMErix. Approved by the FDA in 1998, the vaccine was 76 percent effective in preventing the tick-borne illness. However, since the vaccine was not recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for routine vaccination, it was not covered by the no-fault VICP. This left its manufacturer, SmithKline Beecham, exposed to the civil courts.

Enter the trial lawyers. In 1999, the Philadelphia law firm of Sheller, Ludwig & Bailey duly filed a class action lawsuit against the LYMErix on behalf of 121 individuals who claimed to have experienced adverse reactions, chiefly arthritis, from the vaccine. In 2001, an FDA review of the safety data found no proof that the LYMErix vaccine was dangerous and that the rare cases of arthritis after vaccination were likely due to coincidence. In the face of the lawsuits, the manufacturer voluntarily withdrew the vaccine from the market in 2002. The company settled the class action lawsuit in 2003 by paying the law firm $1 million in legal fees but provided no financial compensation to the "vaccine victims."

Since LYMErix was taken off the market, the annual number of reported Lyme disease cases has quadrupled, and, taking into account underreporting, it is estimated that nearly half a million Americans are treated for the illness each year. (Disclosure: I am one of those cases.) "Cases of Lyme continues to outpace other infectious diseases in the U.S. by significant margins," points out the Global Lyme Alliance patient advocacy group. "In fact, there are 618% more new cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. than Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and West Nile Virus combined." A January 2026 study in JAMA Network calculated that the annual cost of treating Lyme disease could reach up to $1 billion a year. Thanks, Sheller, Ludwig & Bailey!

Despite claims from vaccine critics, vaccines have never been a cash cow for the pharmaceutical industry. While strong demand for COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic temporarily boosted profits for Moderna and Pfizer, total global vaccine revenues of around $73 billion today are only about 4.4 percent of the $1.74 trillion global pharmaceutical market.

The VICP is funded by an excise tax of $0.75 on every purchased dose of vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The VICP trust fund currently has a surplus of more than $4 billion. Since its inception in 1988, the VICP has paid out about $5.4 billion in compensation to people claiming vaccine injuries.

Paul is right that the VICP needs fixing. He is also right that COVID-19 vaccines should no longer be included in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act. A better way forward than Paul's proposed bill was outlined by George Washington University vaccine litigator Renée Gentry in her March 2024 testimony before the Congressional Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Gentry noted that for the first 30 years, the VICP judicial process was relatively speedy. As a result, very few people filing for compensation under the VICP rejected the decisions of the Vaccine Court and filed suit against a manufacturer. On the other hand, she argued that the administrative process for vaccine injury claims under the CICP is way too slow and rigid, especially with regard to COVID-19 vaccine injury cases. (Considering that more than a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S., it's worth noting that only some 14,000 cases claiming serious injury or death from the vaccines have been filed.)

Instead of letting loose trial lawyers to do their worst, Gentry recommended reforming the VICP's no-fault vaccine injury compensation process as provided by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Modernization Act. It addresses the VICP's chief process bottleneck by increasing the number of Special Masters that adjudicate claims to more than the statutory limit of eight. More Special Masters means a reduced case backlog and speedier decisions for those claiming vaccine injuries. The act also moves all pending COVID-19 vaccine claims from the cumbersome CICP and puts them under the VICP adjudication process. In addition, the act increases the amount of compensation that can be awarded to successful claimants.

Nearly 25 years after trial lawyers hounded LYMErix off the market, a new Lyme disease vaccine—assuming FDA approval—may finally become available within the next year or so. Regulating vaccine liability through state and federal courts was a disaster. As history amply shows, exposing vaccine makers to the machinations of trial lawyers will stymie the development of innovative vaccines. Americans would consequently suffer more disease, disability, and death from illnesses that would otherwise have been prevented.

The post We Lost the Lyme Vaccine. Under Rand Paul's New Vaccine Liability Bill, We'll Lose More. appeared first on Reason.com.

Stranger Things' fifth season delivered an epic conclusion to one of Netflix's most popular shows. In the process, the Duffer brothers, creators and showrunners, communicated a libertarian message about moral responsibility.

The protagonists learn that the show's archvillain, Vecna, was traumatized as a little boy: While exploring a mine, he was shot by and felt compelled to kill a paranoid man carrying a piece of the Mind Flayer, an extraterrestrial evil. In light of this revelation, the characters entertain the possibility that Vecna isn't really evil but was simply enslaved by the Mind Flayer. They urge Vecna to resist the being's influence. But he balks at the suggestion he's enthralled. He shares the Mind Flayer's will and goals, he insists.

If Vecna truly lacked agency, he wouldn't be responsible for his actions. But circumstance didn't create Vecna; he did so himself by willfully embracing evil. Accordingly, the heroes mercilessly dispatch the evildoer, bringing peace to their beleaguered hometown of Hawkins once and for all.

The post Review: The Libertarianism of <i>Stranger Things</i> appeared first on Reason.com.

The most impressive thing about The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal's feminist revamp of The Bride of Frankenstein, is how thoroughly ill-conceived it is. This movie fails at everything. 

There is not a single scene, line reading, or fleeting moment that lands. Every single actor is miscast. Every single idea is underdeveloped. Every single moment of intended catharsis is maximally cringe. It is a total and complete misfire, in which every creative choice is a bad one. I have not one good word to say about it. It's the Kristi Noem of feminist monster fantasias. 

The story begins in a Prohibition-era speakeasy, as a young woman Ida (Jessie Buckley) begins to speak out against a grubby local gangster. For her sins, she is killed and buried. And then, shortly afterward, she's dug up and brought back to life. A hundred years after his creation, you see, Frankenstein's monster—he goes by Frank—is still alive. And he's lonely. So Frank (played by Christian Bale) visits the Chicago office of a Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening), a mad scientist who brings Ida back to life in classic monster movie fashion, with fried white hair and a streak of painterly black running across her face. 

Ida and Frank begin traveling the country, exploring feminist concepts while occasionally killing people. There's a more complex plot involving a movie star played by Jake Gyllenhaal and the aforementioned gangster at the speakeasy, but it's so muddled it hardly matters. None of it holds together; I've seen wars in Iran that make more sense than this movie. 

On their trail are a pair of detectives, Jake Wiles and Myrna Mallow, played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz. Technically, Myrna is Jake's assistant. The gag is that she's the one doing all the real detective work, but, see, she's a woman, so everyone disrespects her. This motif is handled in the crudest and most simplistic possible way, as nearly every scene follows the same pattern: Jake and Myrna arrive at a crime scene. The local male police officers behave rudely. Eventually, Myrna finds an important clue. 

As Ida and Frank continue their Bonnie and Clyde-like crime spree, they spark a national feminist revolution, in which women begin rebelling against the patriarchy in various nonsensical ways, mostly by shouting things in the streets. This is barely set up, gets about 90 seconds of screen time, and then is largely dropped from the plot after a brief exchange between Jake and Myrna, in which Jake earnestly gushes: "Imagine if they got this excited over a lady astronaut or a lady brain surgeon." Or, Myrna shoots back, "a lady detective," I think this is supposed to be a provocative zinger. But like everything in the film, it lands with a groan. 

Speaking of groaning, Bale spends most of the movie grunting and growling, trying to find some sort of emotional throughline for his character. But the script offers him nothing except a confused obsession with a film star. Buckley, somehow, is even worse, stuck pointing guns and babbling nonsense feminist koans while the camera whoops and whirls around her, trying to drum up some sort of manic energy. If anything, it's not quirky or audacious enough: The Bride! is such a creative misfire that it even fails as camp. 

Developed in 2023 and early 2024, The Bride! was passed between studios that reportedly disagreed with writer-director Gyllenhaal about budget and creative direction. Looking at the disastrous final product, it's hard not to come down on the side of executives who had creative disagreements. And no amount of money should have been spent on this mess. 

More than anything else, The Bride! feels like the lost remnants of a pre-vibe shift culture, the last vestige of a fully woke world. There are explicit references to riot grrrl culture, and the film's climax literally involves Ida repeatedly shouting "me too!" at no one in particular. 

It would be too easy to describe this as a stitched-together monster of a movie, but at least Frankenstein's monster had something resembling life. 

The post <i>The Bride!</i>: A Feminist Frankenstein That Plays Like a Lost Remnant of Woke Culture appeared first on Reason.com.

Taylor Lorenz is the one who doxxed Libs of TikTok, who came this close to lionising the murderer Luigi Mangione, and who for some reason habitually lies about her age, but she makes some excellent points in this article: “The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all”.

Excerpt:

While social media bans may seem like a prudent measure to protect children, they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults. There is little evidence that social media is driving any type of widespread mental health crisis in children. Studies have repeatedly shown the opposite. Removing anonymity from the web, which will inevitably happen when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for easier government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists and whistleblowers, who rely on online anonymity.

And while some claim the laws would curb big tech’s power, only the largest tech companies have the resources to shoulder the extensive costs of age verification systems. Non-profit and indie platforms could be forced to close, consolidating big tech’s power further. Mass surveillance systems, once constructed, could also be easily leveraged by governments and bad actors.

If we want to fix the problems with social media, the place to start is through comprehensive data-privacy reform and consumer protections. Governments could also take action to break up big tech companies and prosecute them for anti-competitive behaviour. Lawmakers, who claim to care about children, could pass broader social and economic policies that we know would meaningfully improve children’s lives. Social media is a lifeline, especially for marginalised youth such as LGBTQ+ teens. Any policies that limit online access should centre on the most vulnerable children and adults.

To enact the social media bans being proposed around the world requires some system of age verification, which inherently means expanding surveillance technology. Because algorithmic systems cannot accurately estimate age, verifying a user’s age also requires collecting highly sensitive data or government documents to support the biometric data harvested. The laws being considered don’t all stipulate which system will be used, but there are significant privacy and safety concerns with all of them.

Dean Conway has written a supportive article for Central Bylines about the Green Party’s eye-catching new housing policy:

Green Party policy ‘Abolish Landlords’: solving the housing crisis

The Green Party’s ‘Abolish Landlords’ policy could end the housing crisis with a number of measures that will benefit tenants

“The Private Rental Sector has failed”, reads the Green Party’s statement to ‘Abolish Landlords’ motion, adopted as party policy at October’s Green Party Conference. Key elements of its plan to tackle the UK’s endemic housing crisis include:

Abolishing Right-to-Buy legislation and introducing Rent Controls.

Levying more taxes on landlords, including Land Value taxes and national insurance on rental income.

Ending Buy-to-Let mortgages.

Subsidising councils to buy back properties that have not been insulated to EPC rating C or have been vacant for more than six months.

Speaking to Alex Mace by email, Worcester City’s Green Party councillor and co-sponsor of the motion, he told me that ‘Abolish Landlords’ “takes actual concrete steps to solve the housing crisis that are largely how our original stock of council homes were built through the 50s, 60s and 70s”, including establishing “a state-owned housing manufacturer … to deliver housing at scale”. While the motion does not actually outlaw landlordism, it “seeks to make it significantly less attractive to be a private landlord”.

I’m getting a “defund the police” vibe. Tell the base that the slogan means exactly what it says, while telling the rubes that it doesn’t, with scope to row back on either position when convenient.

By the way, here is the Greens’ policy on migration, as stated on their website:

The Green Party in government will:

Implement a fair and humane system of managed immigration
Treat all migrants as if they are citizens
Give all residents the right to vote
Help families to be together
Dismantle the Home Office
Abolish the No Recourse to Public Funds condition
Abolish the ten year route to settlement
Stop the profiteering from application fees
Stop putting people in prison because of their immigration status
Accept our responsibility for the climate emergency and support the people forced to move

That policy would increase the need for rented housing rather a lot.

There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water. You can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available — and still have a cold, raw egg.

That is what I mean when I say current energy policy is in a head-on collision with physics.

– Richard Lyon

Read the whole thing.