"After getting sued heavily for the DTP vaccine, Wyeth (now Pfizer) went to the Reagan White House and demanded liability protections with the threat of getting out of the vaccine business.
"President Reagan asked Wyeth why they couldn’t make safer vaccines.
"And Wyeth answered that they couldn’t because vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.” And that phrase, “unavoidably unsafe,” is in the preamble of the VICP statute.
“And so, anybody who tells you vaccines are safe and effective, the industry itself got immunity from liability by convincing the President and Congress that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe."
--Robert Kennedy Jr.
"In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. "
-- James Monroe, speech to the US Congress on December 2, 1823