What if every vaccine injury claim ever filed in the United States could be searched in seconds, not through scattered court records and government reports, but through a single, searchable database?
In this episode, Leah V. Durant sits down with Stefan Snell, creator of the VICP Registry, a pioneering resource that compiles every claim filed through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) into one accessible platform. Users can explore claims by vaccine, injury, outcome, age, and other key variables, bringing unprecedented transparency to a program that has historically been difficult to navigate.
Stefan is neither an attorney nor a medical professional. He is an IT specialist whose daughter’s complex health challenges prompted a deep dive into vaccine injury research. Along the way, he uncovered information that led him to question whether he, too, may have experienced a vaccine-related injury. What began as a personal quest for answers evolved into an ambitious data project that is transforming how claimants, attorneys, researchers, and the public understand the Vaccine Program.
Join us for a fascinating conversation about data, transparency, and how one individual’s determination led to the creation of a resource unlike anything the Vaccine Program has seen before.
Click to Expand Transcript
Stefan Snell: My daughter had been diagnosed with having developmental and speech delays. So then I was saying, “Well, that’s interesting. I want to look at more cases from the VICP. You know what? I think I can figure this out.”
Leah V. Durant: I’m Leah V. Durant, and this is Vaccine Law Today, the show where you get real answers about vaccine injury, your legal rights, and what to do next. On today’s episode, we’ll discuss what the latest VICP data tells us about the state of vaccine injury compensation, a conversation with the man who built the first searchable database of every vaccine claim ever filed, and your questions about how to protect yourself from the most common vaccine injuries.
I want to start today with some numbers because I think data is one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding what’s really happening inside the vaccine injury compensation program. Every year, the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, publishes an annual report on the VICP. It tracks how many claims were filed, how many were compensated, how many were dismissed, and how much money was awarded. The most recent data shows that since the program began in 1988, over 10,000 claims have been compensated with more than $5 billion paid out to petitioners.
In recent years, SIRVA, shoulder injury related to vaccine administration, has become the most commonly compensated injury in the program, making up the majority of new claims filed. The data also shows a significant and growing backlog of pending cases, meaning many petitioners are waiting years for resolution. The takeaway here, these numbers tell a real story about who is using this program, what injuries are being compensated, and where the system is under strain. The full HRSA annual report is publicly available, and we’ll link to it in the show notes so you can take a look for yourself.
Now, let’s get into today’s main conversation. My guest today is Stefan Snell, the creator of an online tool called the VICP Registry. It’s a first of its kind searchable database that aggregates every vaccine injury claim ever filed in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Stefan isn’t an attorney or a medical professional. He’s a dad who needed answers, couldn’t find them, and decided to build something so that no one else would have to face that same frustration. Stefan, welcome to the show.
Stefan Snell: Thanks, Leah. Thank you for having me.
Leah V. Durant: So just to start off, can you introduce yourself, tell us who you are and what you do professionally and how you came about this?
Stefan Snell: Yeah, my name is Stefan and honestly, I’m just the IT guy. I do sysadmin, network admin work, IT projects, so not really related to vaccines in any way. My daughter had been diagnosed with having developmental and speech delays, and then she also got diagnosed with having something called strabismus, which is this issue where the eye is not following… When you’re looking at something, it looks somewhere else. This led me down this whole rabbit hole of vaccine research because when I was a kid, I didn’t have any issues like this, my sister didn’t, and even my parents. I just thought we have a healthy family, good genetics, and I just didn’t understand. And then next thing you know, she’s having all of these issues. So this was just a very eye-opening experience for me.
So after doing more research, I’d actually discovered this legal paper. It was like a Holland 2011 paper where they went through cases with the VICP, and I think what they did is they followed up with some of those families. And then some of those people who had encephalopathy cases, those people later had children with autism. So then I was saying, “Well, that’s interesting. I want to look at more cases from the VICP.” And so when I did research on this, I was having a really hard time going through the court cases. And so then I was like, “You know what? I think I can figure this out.”
Leah V. Durant: So Stefan, I was just… In going through the site myself, I think it’s a tremendous resource. And I’m just wondering on behalf of our listeners, when they come to the registry for the first time, just walk us through what it is that they see when they get there and how they can best use your registry as a tool.
Stefan Snell: Yeah. So when you load the website, you’re going to have a lot of options to filter between different things. So you’ll be able to see, you can filter by vaccine, you can filter by condition, you can filter by outcome, you can filter by age. So if you want to see what the outcome of the flu vaccine was in adults between a certain age, you can do that. If you’d like to see what the outcomes were, the types of cases and the types of conditions from the Tdap vaccine, you could find that out. If you have a three-year-old daughter, you can look up what types of injuries three-year-old kids were receiving from the vaccines.
Leah V. Durant: So Stefan, at what point did this project that you were working on, this charge that you had, at what point did that turn into something that you wanted to build for other people to help others?
Stefan Snell: To be honest, the way that that worked out is after I had looked at that Holland paper and I had seen that was in 2011 and I was like, “Well, we’re in 2026 now.” And they had to do that by hand. They went through these cases by hand. They reached out to these families and I was like, “I wonder what else is there and what other patterns I might discover?” And I just wanted to see for myself because I was like, “If there’s something here, then I want everyone else to know about it.”
So first it was just about my own curiosity. And then as I was just building it, I was just like, “Wow, I don’t know.” I guess it was just a research project for myself, but now after learning some of the things I’ve learned, I just want other people to know about it.
Leah V. Durant: I think finally we are at a time in our sort of national consciousness on vaccinations where I think people are open to having these conversations. I think providers are oftentimes open to having these conversations. At least I feel like finally, it’s not like the older days where people just, they didn’t understand that these injuries can occur, they didn’t know what they should be looking for. Now I think some of these providers are at least beginning to understand that these things can happen. And the hope is that they’ll be able to use resources like your registry and be able to find the help that they need. So I guess that just makes me wonder, what was your vision for the registry tool? What did you want it to do and where do you see it going from here?
Stefan Snell: My vision for the registry was just to create awareness and allow people to see what types of injuries do actually come from vaccines. And one of the things that was very eye-opening for me about the registry was transverse myelitis from the flu vaccine, because I had actually had transverse myelitis when I was 21 and I was diagnosed with actually having multiple sclerosis at the time because they said if you have lesions on your spine, then there’s a very strong chance that you probably have multiple sclerosis.
So actually for a year there, I was on multiple sclerosis medication, having to take injections, and it left me with permanent nerve damage, permanent leg twitch, and it kind of turned my life upside down. And I didn’t know at all that it could have been from the flu vaccine. And then when I looked at my database, I was like, “Wow, it’s actually, there’s a bunch of cases like that.” And so maybe if I had known about all of this stuff, maybe I could have actually filed a claim and maybe gotten a little bit of compensation.
Leah V. Durant: Yeah, absolutely. It just goes back to what we were saying before about people being educated about the injuries, knowing what to look for, and understanding that they can associate it with their symptoms that they’re experiencing with the vaccine, and then just seeking the right providers who can lead them in the right direction. It reminds me of probably, I don’t know if you and I have discussed this, but I actually had my own vaccine injury. And at the time, this is before SIRVA was really a thing, before the government had acknowledged that SIRVA can happen.
And I remember going to my provider and saying, “This is real.” I mean, this happened to me. And of course, it’s not as serious as some of the other injuries we see. It’s not an autoimmune condition, it’s not transverse myelitis or Guillain-Barre. But I think anytime you experience something like that, I mean, for me, you lose the use of one of your arms and you’re going to your providers who you trust asking for help and no one seems to know what you’re going through. I mean, you wind up feeling kind of jolted by the system and you wind up feeling a little gaslit. So all the more reason why having a tool like this registry that you built is so important for people to understand that A, these injuries can occur and B, that the program exists and you see that there are options for you and treatment that’s available. I think it’s critical.
So when people find out about your tool, when they come across it, what are they typically looking for? Are they looking for information about the program? Are they looking for an attorney? How are they finding you and what are they looking for when they do?
Stefan Snell: I find that the people that are most interested in the website are the people who actually already know about vaccine injuries, unfortunately. But to be honest, most of the people that interact with my website, I don’t know who they are. Although I would say I’d seen a lot of people from Washington and Virginia accessing it. So honestly, I think it might be law firms that are using my website.
Leah V. Durant: Wouldn’t surprise me. But I mean, what a great way, right? What a great way of just putting the information out there so that it’s accessible, it’s drilled down, people can understand it. I think it’s a phenomenal tool and we’re hoping that the more people who can access it, the more people that’ll be helped. So I mean, I guess one question that I have for you is now that you’ve created this tool, are there any future data sets that you want to add? Is there any way that you plan to modify the registry?
Stefan Snell: I think at this time what I’m doing is just I’m making sure to make it as accurate as possible and I’m always having it grab the latest new cases. So automatically at midnight, it goes and grabs the next case if one’s available. So I just like to maintain it, spread awareness about it. And I also had been working on an AI feature where you could link it to your favorite AI model and then you could just ask the AI the questions and it can search the database for you. So that’ll be a feature that I’ll be sharing with people soon.
Leah V. Durant: Wow, that’s incredible. So I’m still trying to figure out how best we could use it. How do you anticipate the everyday user will actually use this wonderful data that you’re putting together for them?
Stefan Snell: Maybe if it’s time to get, let’s say the MMR vaccine, maybe you would go to that website and just check and see what kind of court cases have happened with children under the age of two or under the age of three with MMR, and then just kind kind of evaluate whether or not you’re willing to take that kind of risk and weigh the pros and cons for yourself.
Leah V. Durant: Yeah, makes perfect sense. So tell us, what was it that you saw when you started putting the numbers together, you saw what? What are some of the trends that you were able to notice in putting this together? We know you saw cases of encephalopathy. What are the largest number of cases that are filed before the court? Just curious to know what you saw as a result of reviewing the data.
Stefan Snell: I saw some very interesting information about SIDS. So in the court case, and in order to even really have a successful court case, there has to be pretty good timing with the vaccines. So I had seen it where it was like 48 hours of a vaccine being taken, then they determined that the child had SIDS, even though the timing was so compelling. Because the thing is, timing is very important. When we do studies, it’s a measure of what’s going on in a certain time period. So then to say that someone took something and then within 48 hours they died and then to say, “Well, we don’t know what the cause is.” That requires independent research on its own just to look into that.
Leah V. Durant: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think we see all sorts of trends. I mean, even with regard to some of the well-accepted vaccine injuries, which weren’t accepted previously, right? So there’s always that lag where the scientific community is either unable or unwilling to come to a consensus about what’s causing something. So I just think having information like this is key. I think getting it into the right hands is key. At the end of the day, I think it really does boil down to having providers that are willing to at least listen.
Honestly, I continue to believe that these things, they evolve over time. There was a time when nobody understood even SIRVA, or there was a time when no one understood that GBS could onset after a flu vaccine, and now they’re still questioning whether or not it can onset after a tetanus shot. So my point is the science continues to evolve. So I think the most important thing is just having an open mind toward that and having a medical community that continues to have an open mind because we don’t want vaccine hesitancy. I mean, you want for people to go in understanding the risks and feeling like they have the full picture, they have all the information prior to making a decision.
I think that’s what your website does. It helps to give parents more information. And I think what better thing could you do than to arm people with the information, the tools and resources that they need before they make any significant healthcare decision?
Stefan Snell: Yeah. I think a lot of medical practitioners are quite rigid in their beliefs and it’s like, “Well, if this isn’t already documented, then this cannot possibly come from a vaccine.” And when I hear things like that, that’s what creates vaccine hesitancy for me. How could you be so confident about this?
Leah V. Durant: Right. Well, and I think that’s what Congress wanted to avoid. They wanted for people to feel like this is an open system where you can obtain the information that you need and make the best decisions for yourself and for your family. But I think over time, things have morphed. I think the program has morphed because what you’re describing is exactly what we see in the program as well. So that if this isn’t something that’s well documented, if there’ve not been studies researching this issue, the court’s not going to pay it. And that’s just not what Congress intended. So I think the more we can have these discussions and the more we can talk about these things, the better.
Are there any scientists or practitioners, do you see there ever potentially being an alliance between what is it is that you’re doing and the information that you’re providing and the scientific community? I guess I’m wondering, is there some way that this information can help providers to be able to review and analyze the data? And if so, what could that potentially look like?
Stefan Snell: I’m not sure what it would look like, but I do think that it is very compelling. When I’m talking with people sometimes about the risks of the vaccines, it’s very easy for me to pull it up really quick and be like, “Hey,” I can just pull it up very quickly in 30 seconds and be like, “Look at all the types of issues that have happened with this vaccine. This is worthy of a discussion.” You know what I mean? So I think it’s a very powerful tool and being able to start dialogue maybe even with your practitioner because maybe they weren’t aware of it.
I think it’s actually very likely the case that a lot of practitioners aren’t… They go to school just like anybody else and they just read the textbooks that they’re taught. I think there’s a very strong chance that doctors are also not fully aware of all of the injuries.
Leah V. Durant: Oh, agreed. Agreed. Yeah, I couldn’t tell you how many times we see people who have basic straightforward injuries. They’ve got Guillain-Barre syndrome or brachial neuritis or transverse myelitis. I mean, cases that we all know are very clearly can be tied to vaccines, vaccine injuries, and they’ve gone to providers who missed it. I mean, they don’t get it. They’re not making the link in their heads ahead of time. And I think having some tool like this registry that you created, if nothing else, just raises awareness, right? I mean, it gets both patients and practitioners thinking about the possibilities, and you’ve got to be able to make those connections and make them quickly and seek the treatment that you need from folks who are open to having these discussions.
Stefan Snell: Yeah. I understand that court cases isn’t necessarily scientific evidence, but I think at the very minimum, it’s at least a reason to take another look at the data and to maybe reinvestigate things that we previously thought were settled that maybe aren’t as settled as we thought.
Leah V. Durant: Right, right. What are your thoughts about cases being filed outside of the VICP? Do you think that injured person should be able to file in civil suits or do you think that we should handle all these cases within the vaccine program?
Stefan Snell: I don’t think that there’s enough awareness that the VICP even exists to be able to have this three-year law on the VICP where you only have three years to file, because I think it could take a lot longer than that for you to even realize what has happened. So it would be amazing if we could just lift the immunity from the vaccine manufacturers, although I’m not holding my breath on that one. But at the very least, I think that there should be reform with the VICP. It’s my understanding that the reward amount that you can receive for damages hasn’t changed since the inception of the program. Well, you would probably know, is that true?
Leah V. Durant: Yeah, that’s correct. No major changes to the vaccine program since it was started. There is a bill in Congress now that was recently dropped several weeks ago by two congressmen, a Democrat and a Republican, Congressman Doggett and Congressman Smucker to modernize it. But yeah, you’re right. No changes to pain and suffering awards, no changes to the statute of limitations, no increase in special masters. I mean, nothing has changed in this program except from my perspective for it to become more and more difficult for petitioners to prove their cases.
Stefan Snell: You know what I think maybe would be helpful? The pediatricians at the well baby visits, I think maybe there should be some type of requirement for them to inform them that when they’re offering these vaccines, that they also inform them about the VICP and that they have a recourse. Maybe it should be a legal requirement to do something like that. So that way you won’t end up like me where I didn’t know the reason for my transverse myelitis and maybe you can get the compensation that you do deserve.
Leah V. Durant: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess one of my biggest frustrations with this program, I mean, again, it’s not perfect. I’m glad we have it. And I fully recognize that it’s good to have a benefit for petitioners, but sometimes we’re dealing with these people who have had severe and traumatic injuries. You talked about your bout with transverse myelitis. I mean, patients who are in a wheelchair, they can’t walk, they have been hospitalized in rehabilitation centers after hospitalization, they’ve been intubated, and the maximum award for pain and suffering is $250,000. I mean, these are people that would probably pay $250,000 not to go through the experience that they’ve had.
So from our perspective, anything that could be done to just make these awards meaningful, just reinforcing for people that vaccine entries are rare, we get it. They don’t happen often, but if they do, there’ll be some sort of a compensation or award or some recompense for what you went through so that they can understand that we’ve got your back. There’s something here to put you back in the same position that you were in previous to the injury.
Stefan Snell: I mean, I think back when that program started, $250,000 back then probably would’ve been something in the millions of dollars now if you want to adjust for inflation. So yeah, I think at a very minimum, let’s just get it adjusted for inflation.
Leah V. Durant: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s one of the things that this current bill does. I think they’ve run some numbers. I think it’s around 670 or something like that, but whatever the case may be, just like you said, we need something that’s adjusted every year. Why not? Everything else seems to go up. The cost of living’s not going down for anybody. So absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate the time and all it is that you’re doing to help to get the word out about the VICP. Would love to have you come back as the registry continues to grow. I can only imagine you’re getting more and more views every single day on it. It’s a tremendous tool and we thank you for all you’re doing.
Stefan Snell: Thank you for having me, Leah. Great chatting with you.
Leah V. Durant: Before we wrap up, I want to answer a question that came from someone in our audience. I think it’s one a lot of people wonder about but don’t always think to ask. The question is there anything that can be done to avoid the most common VICP injuries? Great question. And the honest answer is sometimes yes. The most commonly compensated injury in the VICP right now is SIRVA, shoulder injury related to vaccine administration. And SIRVA is sometimes preventable because it’s not always caused by the vaccine itself. Oftentimes, SIRVA is caused by the vaccine being administered incorrectly, specifically being injected too high on the arm into the shoulder joint or bursa rather than the muscle.
If you’re getting a vaccine, you can advocate for yourself. Make sure the injection site is in the middle of your upper arm, the deltoid muscle, not near the top of your shoulder. If something feels off, say so. Beyond SIRVA, most other compensated injuries are harder to predict or prevent. They involve individual immune responses that can vary from person to person. What you can do is pay attention to your body in the days and weeks after vaccination. Document any symptoms that seem unusual or persistent and seek medical attention promptly if something doesn’t feel right. The three-year filing deadline in the VICP runs from the date your first symptom appeared, so early documentation matters both for your health and for your legal options.
What’s the takeaway here? You have more agency than you may think. Knowing how vaccines should be administered and knowing what to watch for afterward can make a real difference. If you have a question you’d like me to answer on a future episode, send it our way at vaccinelaw.com. Thanks for listening to Vaccine Law Today. If you think you may have a vaccine injury case, visit us at vaccinelaw.com. Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I’ll see you next time. New episodes come out every two weeks.