Six years later, a 1983 NIH-funded UCLA study found that Wyeth’s DTP vaccine was killing or causing severe brain injury, including seizures and death, in 1 in every 300 vaccinated children.11 The resultant lawsuits caused the collapse of insurance markets for vaccines and threatened to bankrupt the industry. Wyeth—now Pfizer—claimed to be losing $20 in downstream liability for every dollar it earned on vaccine sales, and induced Congress to pass the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986 shielding vaccine makers from liability.12
