It is now, it has been expanded over the years most recently in response to covid as to include mRNA in the definition of what a vaccine is explicitly to shield these big pharma companies from liability for any harm adverse reactions to mRNA may have to individuals

It is shocking to me that soo many people that normally at against large companies, and against even capitalism do not see the huge danger in classifying these things as something that gives the companies creating them an almost complete liability shield from harms caused by their products.

Once something is a "vaccine" in the US you lose all ability to sue for most harms caused by said vaccine.

Citation please? Here is the procedure for getting compensated for vaccine caused issues - https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation

It should not matter to you whether the compensation is paid by the government or a company, but you can file for compensation and if valid, get compensated for it.

there are all kinds of problems first and foremost is incentives if tax payers (i.e government) are paying for the losses why should they care if they injure anyone? removing product liability is universally a bad idea

Further there is all kinds of Due process issues that make filing a Vaccine claim problematic and very expensive to appeal, there are all kinds of horror stories out there about denied claims, and to appeal the denial is $$$$$$$$$$$$ and no lawyer will take it with out up front payment, and no class action is possible to spread the costs out...

That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place.

Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines. There are horror stories about everything and lawyers not wanting to take things up without upfront payment. But that does not stop those things. Marriage and divorce, child custody, DUI cases, police excess, companies overcharging for things, DMCA being used incorrectly, tech companies having too much power etc. are all problematic and very expensive to appeal. But we live with those. Similarly, there are trade-offs here.

>>That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place.

this is probably where the most of our different world view comes from, I believe the FDA is just a corrupt organization rubber stamping big Pharma, and serves no actual safety purpose. Given the revolving door between the major companies and top level positions in the FDA and the actions of the FDA during COVID I have lots of examples to prove my position.

>>Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines

Incorrect, the Vaccine process establishes an extra Judicial process where by a committee at the DHHS gets to choose if you were actually injured by the vaccine or not, skipping the jury process completely. if you are denied by the DHHS you have to jump right to the Expensive Appeals process, there is no way to fine a standard civil lawsuit and get a Jury of your peers.

Also there is no way to form a class if the FDA screws up and a vaccine causes harm to 100's. 1000's or 10'000s of people, each case has to go through the process individually

I understand that this point you believe the FDA is infallible organization that only cares for the individual, but the FDA has proven time and time again that to be false.

I think our worldviews are different. While I do not think everything is perfect with FDA, the world without FDA is much, much worse than the one with it.

Just because criminals break laws does not mean no laws should be passed. Just because corruption happens in FDA does not mean FDA is entirely corrupt and we should let everyone sell whatever drugs they can think of into the market.

I took it as the literal and previously accepted definition was uniformly changed by both government and secular organizations in near unison. As late as January 2021 vaccines were thought of as dead pathogens - https://web.archive.org/web/20210118194713/https://www.merri...

Merriam Webster's old definition did not exclude therapeutic vaccines. But it did exclude vaccines prepared from viruses.[1]

Probably you heard about diphtheria and tetanus vaccines before 2020. They are prepared from toxins.

Other definitions did not restrict what a vaccine must contain.[2]

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20190118214500/https://www.merria...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160402152957/https://www.dicti...

The word “vaccine” comes from the recognition that people could gain immunity against smallpox via infection with the less-deadly (and live) virus cowpox.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia

The definition has never been constrained to dead pathogens.

it started as live pathogens (cowpox) so it must have gone through many iterations if that were the case

Live poliovirus vaccine continues to be used, and continues to cause occasional active cases and transmission.

There were plenty of protein subunit vaccines and a few viral vector vaccines in use in humans prior to the COVID vaccines. Neither of these are dead pathogens.

> As late as January 2021 vaccines were thought of as dead pathogens

Oh, stop lying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine

"The first successful demonstration of a polio vaccine was by Hilary Koprowski in 1950, with a live attenuated virus which people drank."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine#History

> The technique of cultivating a virus repeatedly in artificial media and isolating less virulent strains was pioneered in the early 20th century by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin who developed an attenuated tuberculosis vaccine called the BCG vaccine.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html

> MMR is an attenuated (weakened) live virus vaccine. This means that after injection, the viruses cause a harmless infection in the vaccinated person with very few, if any, symptoms before they are eliminated from the body. The person’s immune system fights the infection caused by these weakened viruses, and immunity (the body’s protection from the virus) develops.